Turns out pelicans like to party. Beachgoers in OB over the weekend were treated to the sight of a massive flock of brown pelicans feeding and swarming the pier. For much of the day on Sunday, thousands of the birds wheeled and dived, then flew over to the nearby pier to roost and rest before heading back for seconds and thirds. Photo by Jim Grant The term “brown” in this case is misapplied to a large portion of the mature local population, whose heads are festooned with bright yellow, red and white feathers offsetting their intelligent pale-blue eyes. They’re in their breeding plumage, according to UC San Diego post-doc Tammy Russell, who got her Ph.D. in oceanography from the Scripps Institution of Oceanography two years ago and has continued her seabird research there since that time. The adult birds were joined by hundreds of their adolescent brethren, most of whom are the brownest of brown, “maybe just finishing or in the middle of their first year,” she added. Why so many in one spot at one time? “So what happened on Sunday at Ocean Beach is a really cool example of when you have an abundant food source,” the scientist explained. “So they eat small, little fish. It was probably anchovies. So when there’s an abundance of fish and that overlaps with really nice roosting habitat — so, habitat where they can go and rest between feeding or moving around — and since the Ocean Beach Pier has been closed, this is, like, kind of set up this perfect undisturbed location where they can go and rest.” A shot of the brown pelicans on the Ocean Beach Pier on Sunday, Dec. 14. Photo by Jim Grant. All the birds were not part of a mega-flock, but they are sociable when there’s food. “… they move from roost to feeding location and migrate in much smaller groups, but a feeding group of seabirds quickly gets the attention of other birds, and others will travel to join them, creating a much larger aggregation of birds,” Russell, who has personally seen more than 1,100 species of birds, told NBC 7. “For resting, it is typical that they roost in large groups, and it’s not uncommon to find them in the thousands at these roosts (typically on jetties because the coastal cliffs they would have typically used are developed). “Also, because a lot of birds are moving south right now, you have high numbers of birds moving past San Diego, increasing the number of birds that can accumulate at feeding and resting locations (both of which were available at OB pier on Sunday).” At one time, back in the early ’70s, brown pelicans, which migrate from down in Mexico all the way up to Washington state, were endangered, but after a ban on DDT, which thinned out eggshells precipitously, the species recovered, giving rise to the crowd of seabirds seen on Sunday. “Their populations have recovered, and then they were delisted in 2009,” Russell said. Still photographer Jim Grant, who has shared his photos with NBC San Diego for many years and has a special love for OB and, especially, for pelicans, was contacted by a friend, James McCabe, on Sunday afternoon. McCabe’s video of thousands of pelicans prompted Grant to hustle over to Ocean Beach to snap photos. “I’ve been shooting down there for probably the good part of 30 years, and I’ve never seen anything quite like that yesterday,” Grant said on Monday, adding that he had seen another huge group of pelicans one time in La Jolla, though. Still photographer Jim Grant got a shot of a similar brown pelican flock at the Children’s Pool in La Jolla a few years back. Despite arriving hours after the swarm had descended on Sunday, there were still thousands of birds perched on the pier and plunging into the waves. “It was just — it was phenomenal,” Grant said, adding later, “It was like being in a National Geographic special.” Grant tried to put into words why he thinks many people marvel at the flying dinosaurs. “I really love the way that they’re so goofy when they’re on … when they’re walking, but when they take [to] the air, they’re so graceful,” Grant said. “It’s just almost unbelievable that something so goofy on land can be so liquid and so fluid once they get in the air, and they’re just really, really interesting to watch.” It may be surprising to some that there’s still a lot we don’t know about pelicans. “… we’re still learning a lot about their actual movements,” Russell said, adding, “I work with a nonprofit called Pelican Science, and we’ve been putting these electronic leg bands on pelicans to track where they go, and we’re learning a lot about their movements within the year for the first time ever, you know, seeing what an individual is actually up to.” Some of our feathered friends, though, “kind of like hang out in southern California, which I don’t blame them [for],” Russell said. Sadly for Obecians, the show was over by Monday, when the only evidence of their roost was a fresh coat of white “paint.” ...read more read less