American Birding Association photographer Drew Wheelan eyed these White Pelicans in a line along the Louisiana shore on Aug. 23. Millions of birds are roosting on the contaminated shorelines, which prompted Wheelan to wonder whether they were “testing fate:”
“Yesterday while on an expedition to try and find an island where many dead birds were reported, we saw a large flock of American White Pelicans roosting along the oily shores of Terrbonne Bay. To see these majestic creatures along the shores where thousands of other birds are dying of unknown causes is distressing to say the least.
“Although the appearance of oil on plumage seems to be going down, throughout the gulf, people are finding dead and dying birds that don’t appear oiled. On Raccoon Island, and in Lake Felicity photos have come out of massive die offs of birds, and it is very common now to see birds that just don’t look right. They look lethargic and tattered. That’s not a very scientific description, but anecdotally it seems that some of the birds down here just aren’t healthy. Perhaps we are just now seeing the physiological effects of the oiling that some of these birds experienced earlier, or is it a secondary affect from something in the contaminated eco-system, or perhaps something totally unrelated?”
Read more of Drew’s post on the ABA site about recent bird sightings
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Photo by Drew Wheelan, ABA. Used by permission.