The fun thing about Florida is you can see both American white pelicans and brown pelicans (the above bird). This bird was hanging out near a boat launch in Titusville. Some of the brown pelicans can be quite "tame" around there. And I've heard different theories that some brown pelicans learn to beg from people, may just be ill or are almost completely blind from cornea damage sustained from their spectacular dives into the water for fish. I can't seem to find any articles to support that but with a pelican's natural ability to barf on you when stress, I can't imagine a ton of people wanting to line up and study that.

This bird did some half-hearded dives, not from very high up, but at one point the brown pelican appeared to have a fish and a laughing gull was ready to steal it. Certain species of gulls and terns will try to steal food from pelicans as they bring their bills up out from the surface and pour out the water from their gular pouch (the baggy part of the pelican bill). This is called kleptoparasitism--fun word. Laughing gulls who are so adept at grabbing oyster crackers in midair as people toss them are also very adept as hovering or even landing on a pelican to steal their catch.

This pelican was wise to the kleptoparasitism routine and kept its bill in the water until the gull got bored and moved on.

"Is the laughing gull finally gone?"

"Finally, I can swallow my fish in peace."

Non Birding Bill and I are going to experiment with a longer podcast this week. We are opening a show that is a paroday of The Love Boat at the Bryant Lake Bowl this week and chances are good we will not be able to keep up with doing three shows this week. Let us know if you would like this to be shorter and more often or once a week and longer. You can follow me on Twitter @Birdchick (ask me bird questions) and you can follow NBB @bstiteler (do NOT ask him bird questions). You can always email me sharon at birdchick dot com or connect with me via Facebook here.

Non Birding Bill's great horned owl butt he took holding his iPhone up to my Swarovski ELs:

Speaking of Swarovski Optik, have you seen Pete Dunne's review of their new 10x50 and 12x50 ELs. He loves 'em!

Bird Blogs:

In today's podcast, we talk about some of my favorite online birding pranks for April 1, 2011 as well as one of my all time favorite bird pranks--that still gets traffic today.

This year's top pranks:

I think Non Birding Bill will love this: Discount Bird Calls

American Birding Association Checklist Changes

Earth, Wind and Water Blog announces plans for ESPN8 to host American Birding Big Day tv show (I totally fell for this one)

Win a Free birding trip to Thailand with David Sibley and ABA President Jeff Gordon at 10,000 Birds

A prank I aided in pulling with another blogger who wishes to remain anonymous (but if you buy me a single malt scotch at a Birds and Beers, I'll gladly verbally out this person) about the "rediscovery" of a Carolina Parakeet.

Bird News:

This unfortunately is not a prank. An Arkansas Delta flight hit a flock of birds. They were not identifiable according to the news article, but I think many birders can see from the photos (WARNING GRAPHIC) that they are American white pelicans based on the upper bill, yellow skin in front of the bill and black wing tips.

We mentioned the oil spill threatening rockhopper penguins on an island chain located halfway between Africa and Argentina in the podcast a couple of weeks ago and in more hopeful news, there are at least 5000 penguins that have been gathered for rescue. The death toll so far appears to be 300 penguins but it sounds like state officials and local volunteers are working as hard as they can to help this breeding colony. Here's a great video of one of the first people on the scene...it's sad to note that the penguins are not the only ones affected by the spill. If you want to help, send money to International Bird Rescue Research Center.

Dacorah Live Bald Eagle Cam gets so much traffic with chick hatching that it crashes the site. Here are highlights of the hatching. Early on you can see the beaks "pipping" out of the eggs and by the end there's a floofy eaglet. You can try and watch the live cam here...if it's not too overloaded with traffic. It is nice to have on as background to your work day--it's excellent video quality and the sounds of surrounding birds is awesome. Here's a screen shot from Sunday night and you can see quite the buffet: rabbit feet, crow and a fish:

Who knew bald eagles were fast enough to catch a crow? Thanks to BosqueBill for pointing it out on Twitter.

Spring Migration is seriously on! Check out this animated RADAR from BadBirdz from Saturday night. Get the latest updates here. Did you see any new birds on Sunday or Monday?

Feathers are in the news twice:

Using chicken feathers as a basis for plastics?

Pigeons with darker feathers are healthier than pigeons with light feathers.

Upcoming Birding Event:

American Birding Association young birder camps. One in Colorado and one in the Lower Rio Grande Valley in Texas. They seriously need to offer these to adults.

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