Page:Florida Trails as seen from Jacksonville to Key West and from November to April inclusive.djvu/182

 CHAPTER XII

SEVEN THOUSAND PELICANS

"Plumpskin, buffskin, pelican, gee! We think no bird so happy as we. Plumpskin, buffskin, pelican jill! We thought so then and we think so still."

So runs an ancient and foolish ditty. There is something about it which makes one think of pelicans as doing a little dance and thus happily singing, wing in wing, so to speak. Observing the pelicans that meet the steamers at Jacksonville and some others later in captivity, I had thought them of a grave and reverend dignity which belied the ditty and its suggestions. Now I know better. It is a bachelor pelican that first gave me an inkling of "how happy the life of a bird must be." He has no home, this bachelor pelican, just a habitat which is a tiny cove in the long island which bars the Indian River from the sea five or six miles below Fort Pierce. So deep does this cove dent the island that the roaring surf of the east side is but a stone throw from its tip, yet the wind which blows almost always from the sea leaves its surface unruffled. Here my bachelor pelican lives to sail and soar and cut