Presumably science still hasn’t come up with the answer as to how these pelicans know when the Coongie Lakes fill with water.
Since it happens only once every decade or longer it’s hard to know how ‘they’ know.
Even birds in Russia get on the wing and head down for a paddle and a bit of mating.
All that aside, it’s even harder to figure out how they can come back to the same island in the lakes to breed.
I mean, when they left, they weren’t much more than chicks and have cruised around our coasts for ten years or so.
This is the same place I photographed in 1999. Click here to look at the island back then (it’s the third photo down). It doesn’t look much like the same place. Yet they know.
Soon, if not already, the larger of the two islands will be crammed with pelicans and not long after that there will be almost as many chicks ready to start the cycle all over again.