A flock of nearly 200 white pelicans has drawn flocks of people to Deer Lagoon and Useless Bay on Whidbey Island.
“They look like old men,” Diana Conners said. “They have long necks and they tuck their bill way under like this.”
The white pelicans showed up around June. There have only been a few sightings ever in the spot, and never this many.
White pelicans are native to dryer more arid climates like eastern Washington. Some believe the flock is a sign of an environmental change, one these birds prefer.
Whenever an ecosystem shifts, even if it benefits one species, it often can mean the opposite for other species.
And nearby, around Protection Island just north of Discovery Bay, another bird is suffering a major die off.
“It’s almost not floating, its head is lulled back. Its eyes are glassy and watery. This is a very, very sick bird,” Julia Parrish described, pointing at a photo.
Parrish is a sea bird biologist and COASST Executive Director. She is part of an ongoing study to solve the mystery of why the rhinoceros auklet is doing so poorly.
It’s had the worst reproductive success this year since surveys began a decade ago.
“What COASST sees, quite literally, is a dead bird that has washed in on the tide, so it dies at sea and becomes a floating mass,” she said.
Some of the birds starved, and many have pneumonia.
“We’ve seen these massive mortality events, hundreds of thousands of birds washing ashore. Unprecedented," Parrish said. "That kind of event we might have expected to see once in 20, 30 or 50 years. We are seeing that every year. So, that’s a big warning sign that something is changing in the system."
With ecological change, there are typically losers and winners.
“They’re impossible to count with so many so close, maybe 120 of them,” said George Heleker, who watches the pelicans everyday, his wife by his side.
Whether the pelicans will return next year, no one knows. If they do, their audience will certain flock to see them.
“It is really magnificent, especially when they’re flying,” Heleker smiled.
