{"id":1103,"date":"2013-01-29T17:02:46","date_gmt":"2013-01-29T22:02:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ae0.92e.myftpupload.com\/?p=1103"},"modified":"2013-01-30T07:56:07","modified_gmt":"2013-01-30T12:56:07","slug":"pelicans","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bestvillageblog.com\/?p=1103","title":{"rendered":"The American White Pelican…"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"OLYMPUS<\/a>\u00a0…is alive and well in The Villages.\u00a0 I had mentioned them in one of my more recent blogs, and was determined to find them and get some pictures.\u00a0 More easily said than done.\u00a0 I was on Rio Grande and spotted them in the lake by Chula Vista, however did not have my camera.\u00a0 When I got home I mentioned to Sean that I really wanted to get pictures and they were in the lake nearby.\u00a0 We hopped in the golf cart and beelined back to the lake where I had seen them, and to our disappointment, they were gone.\u00a0 We decided to check the water behind Freedom Point as they are there sometimes, and on our way checked Lake Mira Mar, where there were hundreds of egrets and seagulls, having their afternoon snack.\u00a0 There were quite a few people pulling up with bags of bread and from the behavior of the birds, this must be a daily happening.\u00a0 However, there were no pelicans to be seen.\u00a0 We\u00a0gave up our\u00a0hunt\u00a0and thought a Dunkin Donuts coffee would be in order, however Sean mentioned Ollie’s Frozen Custard, just as it was crossing my mind too. \u00a0Ollie’s\u00a0won by\u00a0a majority\u00a0vote.\u00a0 After thoroughly enjoying our treat and with\u00a0the guilt starting to set in, we headed back home.\u00a0 To our surprise we found a small group of pelicans in the pond behind Freedom Point.\u00a0 I took some pictures and we sat and watched them for awhile.\u00a0 The white pelican does\u00a0not take a flying\u00a0dive for its’ food, rather they swim around and feed\u00a0in groups and stick their bills in the water to look for schools of fish.\u00a0 When they find a school the entire group all stick their bills and heads\u00a0in at one time and keep them underwater while they feed,\u00a0which is quite something to see.\u00a0 We headed on home and took the recreational cart path at the Hacienda Country Club, which winds adjacent to the golf course and passes a few small ponds.\u00a0 We came around one corner, to our surprise,\u00a0 there was another flock.\u00a0 It was much larger and it had to have had over 100 birds.\u00a0 I tried to get as close as I could but they started swimming away.\u00a0 I wish I was a better photographer,\u00a0as it is hard to see how big they really are.\u00a0 They are 5’2″ long and have a wing span of 8′\u00a0 You can see some black under their wings when they fly. They rest on sandbars, they do not fly up into trees.\u00a0\u00a0 Their range is the Florida peninsula, on inland lakes, from Sept. to April.\u00a0 I\u00a0had read a few years ago about white Pelicans that migrated from\u00a0lakes in Wisconsin, so I’m quite sure that is where these go for the summer.\u00a0I think you would have to agree that that is what you would call a \u00a0real snowbird.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u00a0…is alive and well in The Villages.\u00a0 I had mentioned them in one of my more recent blogs, and was determined to find them and get some pictures.\u00a0 More easily said than done.\u00a0 I was on Rio Grande and spotted them in the lake by Chula Vista, however did not have my camera.\u00a0 When I […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1103","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bestvillageblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1103","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bestvillageblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bestvillageblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bestvillageblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bestvillageblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1103"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/bestvillageblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1103\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1105,"href":"https:\/\/bestvillageblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1103\/revisions\/1105"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bestvillageblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1103"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bestvillageblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1103"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bestvillageblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1103"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}