The Great White Knob

I'm from the midwest.  So I may have an unusually strong interest in water and marine animals since there was such a dearth of them in the cornfields of central Illinois.  Immediately upon arriving in central WA, I was struck by the abundance of water.  (I soon found out, with the exception of the Columbia River, all that water comes from dams and canals.)  Many of my formative experiences in central WA were in the Grand Coulee, in and around its lakes.

A memorable experience was one in which I saw a wild pelican on Lake Lenore.  I've only seen photos of pelicans and maybe some on a vacation somewhere in California or Europe.  And at zoos probably.  But on this day I was driving up the Coulee on a sunshiny day, heading up to the state park to take photos, and I saw something huge on the water that was well-camoflauged against the white gleams of the sun reflecting off choppy waves on Lake Lenore.  As is often the case in the Coulee, the wind was strong.

I pulled off the road and got a couple shots of this thing with the zoom lens of the camera.  I know I would have to view the photos on the computer to fully identify the bird.  What was so strange to me was the fact the bird's bright yellow beak had a huge knob on the top.  As it turns out, this beak-knob is very common on American White Pelicans, which themselves are common in the Columbia Basin during their annual migration, but I didn't know it at the time and thought I was looking at some huge rare oceanic bird who got lost and ended up in Lake Lenore, in the deserts of central WA.  I don't remember what I was planning to photograph that day, but due to high wind and no tripod, my shots of the Beak Knob Bird came out pretty bad.  However, the photos did clearly identify the bird, and more importantly they started my nascent interest in native birds.

I increasingly notice the birds we see and hear in the periphery of everyplace we go in the great outdoors.  The sounds especially are worth getting to know--if for no other reason than to fully appreciate the quiet places in nature.