Pelicans Lose The Fight

 Adventure Location: Rockport, Texas

Adventure Date: 12-19-2020

Click the pic to enlarge it.

A bit of a nasty morning it was but the OFM decided to attempt a walk at the Beach Park. So Sierra carefully got us there safely.  The weather did not look very promising so we chose to walk in circles near Sierra down by the wooden pier.

A look at the nearby skies made the OFM nervous but he needed the exercise badly. Little did he know how vigorous it would get.

At the pier on the right the sea gulls were all lined up for some reason but we did not go over to see what was happening.

So we started off to the left toward the Allegro Channel.  We noticed as we meandered along that the tides were back to normal after several days of very low tides. That was good to see as was the bait fish back in the area in good quantity.

When we reached the Allegro Channel bulkhead the show was already going on. Every morning  in the 0800 to 1000 time a visit from several dolphin comes through the general area having breakfast. Now realize that dolphin are up to 12 feet in length and 1000 pounds in weight.

This one was swimming along to our left when we got there.  It seemed to be swimming along just checking things out. It was about twenty feet away. One thing neat about this area of the coast is that you get a lot of sightings of dolphin up close.

Back to the OFM’s right in the channel was a bit of commotion where this dolphin had apparently found some food to eat.  The pelicans will hang around and grab pieces of fish the dolphins leave floating around.  This dolphin was headed back into the channel area when the photo was taken.

Then right across the channel a big ruckus was going on. Apparently the pelican had got too close to the dolphin and as they tend to do, the dolphin had apparently knocked the pelican flopping. By the time we got the camera on the scene the pelican was upright again and the dolphin was moving on along.

It is not uncommon to see a ruckus between a dolphin and some bird or another getting too close.

Just after that incident the first few rain drops hit the OFM in the back. When he looked back Sierra was already a fuzzy image in the rain wall headed toward the OFM.  He tried to walk briskly but quickly decided that the cold rain was too cold so he jogged as gently as he could to get under the pavilion for protection.  He still got to enjoy the fun of getting totally soaked in cold rain water.

As soon as the first storm subsided a little he headed for Sierra to escape. We had rain squalls for several hours before things calmed down decently. However getting to visit with the dolphins again was a great way of trying to have tooooo much fun again.