rare birds
A formation of
pelicans fl ies through
cloudless skies.
Pat Welle
Pelican sightings on
the rise in recent years
BY DAVID CAMPICHE
Ethan Makowsky
The Willapa National Wildlife Refuge
is rich in habitat diversity. This land
includes forests, beaches and streams.
6 // COASTWEEKEND.COM
Aside from morning overcast, this
is the season of warm winds, sunshine
and the return of many of the Colum-
bia-Pacifi c’s migrating birds. High in
the pearl-blue, summer sky, silhou-
etted and backlit, a squadron of Amer-
ican white pelicans glides with incred-
ible steadiness over Pacifi c waters.
As kids growing up on the Long
Beach Peninsula, we never saw a pel-
ican. For that matter, never saw the
vulture or the scrub jay either. We
wondered about the birds’ absence.
Did they reside far to the south, in
southern Oregon or in California?
Mexico, maybe?
Much later, we heard about pel-
icans, vultures and raptors from the
journals of Capt. William Clark,
how he shot two condors, well, one.
George Drouillard, a Shawnee scout
and hunter, shot the second in the
vicinity of Chinook, Washington.
Pat Welle
See Page 7
An American white pelican shows off its long beak and wide wingspan.