American White Pelican

We were parked on this dirt road waiting to see if any waterfowl would come out of the reeds when this beautiful Pelican flew alongside our car. We've seen numbers of them in the larger slough but had never gotten this close to them before. Spying my car, this Pelican chose not to land in the smaller slough and continued flying towards the larger of the two sloughs. A farmer stopped and talked to us the next day and told us all the fish had died the previous winter in both sloughs due to lack of oxygen he thought. The previous winter followed a drought which brought water levels down so many shallow sloughs and lakes froze out completely