Wet and Wild Wednesday

While I was getting ready for my Sky Watch Friday post tomorrow I came across this photo that I took while I was in Alaska back in 2001. I thought that it would be a great pic for my future meme wet and wild Wednesday.

Michelle and I visited Alaska back in 2001 and had perhaps the most memorable trip of our lives. We began the trip by flying into Anchorage and driving, from there, up to Denali National Park. We spent most of our first week traveling through Denali on the park tour bus, you are only able to drive 18 miles into Denali unless you have a permit, to go any further into the park you need to take one of the park buses or walk. After our week up in Denali we spent a day driving down to Seward Alaska where we got aboard a ship for a 7 day cruise through the Inside Passage. Neither Michelle or I was very enamored by the actual cruise however we booked excursions for each day that we were in a port. These excursions where the highlight of the cruise and the one that turned out to be the most exciting was a whale watching tour that we took out of Juneau. Besides for our first glimpse of sea otter we also got our best look at humpback whales. Unlike many of the other whale watches that we had taken before and even ones taken since these whales were up close and person with our boat. We got to see a lot of very interesting whale behavior up close and personal like rolling around in the kelp beds and spy hopping, peaking out of the water to take a look at us as in the picture above.

The best part of the trip though was when one of the whales breached fairly close to our boat. It happened extremely quick, so quick that Michelle only got to see the splash. Fortunately I was facing the right way and got my camera up fast enough to get this quick pic. It may not be the best composition but I was still extremely jazzed that I was able to get a close up breach shot.

Wet and Wild Wednesday

No this is not a new meme, at least not yet, it is just a new idea that I have had to showcase birds or animals that live, hunt, or just spend time in the water on Wednesdays. This first Wet and Wild Wednesday features some waterfowl that I photographed on the Minnesota and South Dakota border on my way to a shorebird workshop back on August 8th.
As I was about to cross the border into South Dakota, I came across the headwaters of the Minnesota River as it runs out of Big Stone Lake. There in the river I spotted about a half a dozen American white pelicans.

We do not see American white pelicans in most of Minnesota except during migration. They spend their summers on interior lakes in the north central and western portions of North America. This would include areas from western Minnesota to northern California and up into Canada.
White pelicans eat mainly fish. They catch their prey by dipping their head under water and scooping fish up with the pouch that is connected to the lower mandible of their bill. This pouch can stretch about six inches allowing it to expand to hold approximately 3 gallons of water and fish.
White pelicans are fairly social birds. They are often found hunting together in small groups. These hunting groups will swim in a circle gathering the fish together and then will all dip their bills to scoop up the fish at the same time. American white pelicans nest in large colonies with the nests located on the ground. When they migrate south for the winter, to Southern California, Texas, Louisiana, Florida, Mexico and Central America, the pelicans will also travel in large flocks, most often flying in a V formation.
Another bird that was mixed in with the pelicans was a double-crested cormorant. Although they spend a lot of time in the water, or under the water diving for fish, the cormorants feathers are not waterproof like those of other waterfowl. That is why you often see cormorants standing with their wings stretched out, typically exposed to the sun. They actually need to do this to dry their feathers so that they can fly.