Quarantine entry #28 - April 18

Obligatory disclaimer: I hate my life. It sucks. It is getting out of my control and I cannot do anything about it – all because somewhere in China a wrong person ate a wrong bat, or scaly anteater, or something. Real life sucks and no mistake. No escape either, especially from the legal side of things. What next?

What can’t be cured, must be endured, I suppose, though it a thin enough consolation once you are on a pointy end of things. Real life sucks, again, and COVID-19 is only making it worse – but we were trying to move on. Where to?

To the pelicans, I suppose. They were mentioned a while back, when we were discussing ibises, so let us recap. The ibises are a subfamily in the ibis-spoonbill family, making them close relatives. The herons belong to a different family, but to the same order, and the storks belong to a different order altogether. Pause. So where the pelicans come in?

In the past times – including the late 20^th century – pelicans were grouped into the same order as the cormorants, gannets, anhingas, frigatebirds and tropicbirds belong to, (among others). Now, though, the tropicbirds have their own order, while the pelicans were proven to be more closely related to herons, ibises and spoonbills on one hand, and to the hammerkop and the shoebill stork on the other. Pause.

Out of all this motley crew, the pelican is the odd one out, with its’ short legs and neck, and a massive beak, complete with a pouch that enables pelican to catch big fish and other prey – I believe that it was on David Attenborough’s ‘Life’ series, (the bird-based episode, most likely), when we saw pelicans prey on chicks of gannets rather than fish. They may look goofy, but, apparently, they owe their body shape to air sacks beneath the skin, and otherwise, they are leaner than how they look. Pause. ‘Planet Dinosaur’ used to talk how carnivorous dinosaurs, (including bird ancestors), developed air sacks to be lighter and faster than their prey. Hah.

…The shoebill stork looks vaguely like a pelican, but it has no pouch in its bill, it is just big and wide and heavy; physical similarities are superficial, though it does look like a modern dinosaur. The hammerkop, on the other hand, looks like some sort of a heron or a stork instead. It builds big nests in its’ African homeland, but, again, it does not look like a pelican at all. It and the shoebill stork are more closely related to each other than to the pelicans, after all. What next?

Speaking of appearances, there is also the pelican’s appearance in the Christian mythos; to wit, that a pelican nourishes its hungry chicks with its’ own blood. I believe that even Shakespeare mentioned it, in ‘King Lear’ or something. Leaving aside the entire issue of realism, there’s also the fact that it is depicted nothing like a pelican – more like a generic bird with a long neck and a short sharp beak with which it tears its breast so that its’ young would feed on its blood. Christian religion is weird sometimes, and this heraldic pelican looks nothing like the real pelican, again. I am surprised that it did not surface in Westeros or some similar place, eh?

…Getting back to real life, the pelican- or gulper eels deserve an honorary mention. See, these deep-water fish have extendable mouths that form a pouch similar to the one formed in the pelican’s bill for pretty much the same goal – to swallow bigger prey. Whereas the pelican birds are known well enough, the gulper eels – not so much, so let us put them aside, for now. Anything else?

…Sadly, no. Rather, this is it for the pelicans and co. Their relationship with the wading birds that are not storks has not been defined yet, and they are more formidable than how they look. Ah well, appearances are deceptive and all that. For now, though, this is it. See you all soon!