Bellycan

08 Jan 2007

Ever since I was young, the one thing I've known about the pelican is that when no food is available they will pluck breast feathers to feed their own blood to their young. Which is why the Irish Blood Transfusion Service has a pelican as their emblem/logo, which my Opa designed decades ago (the original emblem that is). But the whole thing is one of those childhood memories I'm kind of hazy on, you know?

Wikipedia says the blood-feeding "... legend may have arisen because the pelican used to suffer from a disease that left a red mark on its chest." Legend or not, pelicans have always struck a chord with me.

They're magnificent big birds with huge eyes and an enormous beak you don't want to mess with. Before I had my zoom lens I used to try slowly creeping near them... they'd watch me like a hawk for a bit and then when I got too close for comfort instead of flying away they'd slowly waddle in my direction - and believe me, I'd get the hell out of there. Like I said, they're big!

H has always known the lines "A wonderful bird is the pelican; His bill can hold more than his belican." so I searched for the rest of it and found it's an old limerick:

A wonderful bird is the pelican
His bill can hold more than his belican.
He can take in his beak
Food enough for a week;
But I'm damned if I see how the helican.

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