In Search of Pelicans

“Those who contemplate the beauty of the earth will find reserves of strength for as long as life lasts.” Rachel Carson

  I longed to see them. Those big-billed birds not usually mentioned in the same sentence as Illinois.  For two decades, white pelicans have been splashing around in lakes and rivers of my home state, their elongated orange beaks seeking sustenance: turtles, small fish, tadpoles, crawdads and whatever other creatures have the bad luck to be nearby. They arrive from the Gulf of Mexico and Central America by the thousands. I am not sure where these pelicans are headed, but they settle in the heartland for the mating season, spending their honeymoons in cozy Midwest waters.

At four feet, pelicans are as tall as a third-grader, with a wingspan wider than an eagle’s. Their beaks are built for scooping up their prey, assisted by a baggy pouch that stretches like a fishing net to optimize their catch. You almost expect these winged creatures to tip over from the sheet weight of their beaks.

 My younger daughter Aster and I once explored a sanctuary for injured pelicans near Key Largo. Those with severely damaged wings were sequestered in protected areas.  But other webbed patients  freely roamed on boardwalks, mingling with tourists frantic to snap cellphone photos. I must admit I was a little intimated since I had read that pelican beaks are lined with razor sharp teeth so they can hold onto their prey. It was a short visit.

But the Florida Keys are far from Rock River Run, an Illinois bird rookery rumored to be favored by pelican spotters and not far from where I grew up.  I park my Nissan alongside one of the few other vehicles in the lot. I spot what appears to be a muskrat ambling across the service road.  Just a couple of months ago, there were sightings of eagles, soaring above the 100-acre lake.

There is a small island about fifty feet offshore where several dozen milky white birds roost on green branches. I reach inside my backpack to discover I have forgotten my binoculars. I squint for a minute and judge the birds to be egrets. They look like feathery peace doves on a Christmas tree.

 I start walking on a gravel path that hugs the lake. After a few minutes, I spy them. Six or seven double breasted cormorants swoop close to the water’s surface, their elegant black necks stretched as if preparing to model a string of pearls.  With the help of an app, I identify several velvety clumps of wooly mullein, which by August, will grow into five-foot pillars bearing yellow flowers.  A Russian olive tree, also called silverberry, teeters on the shoreline. Thick honeysuckle bushes tease the promise of blossoms. Carpets of sweet alyssum and coneflower poke through the spring earth.

I see all these treasures. But not a single pelican. Of course, there would be more than one, since pelicans travel in “squads.”

I am disappointed, but not defeated. The next day I happen to read a chapter in Anthony Doerr’s memoir,” Four Seasons in Rome,” in which he confesses his obsessive desire to watch snowflakes drift through the oculus,  the eye atop the dome of the city’s famous Pantheon.  To the author’s dismay, Rome did not have a single snowfall the winter of his sabbatical.

  “Sometimes the things we don’t see,” Doerr writes, “are more beautiful than anything else.”