In the winter and spring of 2006, we had a lot more pelicans on Bayou St. John than we usually do. They are lovely and graceful birds, over four feet long, six in wingspan clad in gray-brown feathers that seem to shift in hue as the pelicans wheel and dive.
As uplifting as it was to see our winged neighbors after an autumn with few signs of life, their visit was a reminder of sad tidings: their home was trashed.
In 1903, Teddy Roosevelt was concerned at reports seabirds and their nesting areas being destroyed by poachers gathering plumes for ladies' hats. He declared Pelican Island in Florida a bird refuge, the first National Wildlife Refuge in the nation. The following year, Breton Sound's islands, inlets and marshes were given the same federal protection, becoming the Breton National Wildlife Refuge.
Roosevelt came to Breton Sound in 1915 to experience the glory of this massive rookery. The following clip of Roosevelt, purportedly at Breton, is the only known film of him shot at a National Wildlife Refuge.
In its first hundred years, the Sound's marshes and barrier islands were eaten by coastal erosion and battered by storms, but continued to provide home to countless seabirds. The Refuge, however diminished, remained a national treasure.
The storms of 2005 were devastating to the Refuge. The Chandeleur islands shrunk by more than two-thirds. Breton Island is little more than a parenthesis of sand. Thousands of acres of prime pelican real estate ripped by wind and drowned in seawater. Four springs later, despite some tentative signs of recovery, nesting areas are shrunken and stressed.
The birds themselves haven't had an easy century, either. After being spared extinction in the cause of millinery by TR, they were nearly wiped out again mid-century by the pesticide DDT. In 1963, not a single brown pelican, the state's bird, could be found here.
In 1968, Louisiana's Wildlife and Fisheries Department, along with the Florida Game and Fresh Water Fish Commission, began transporting fledgling pelicans from Florida to habitat in Louisiana. After a rather unsure beginning, the program proved so successful that, despite storms and shrinking homes, populations had recovered so much that the brown pelican was removed from the endangered list two years ago.
Now that success story may be coming to an abrupt end. No need to link the stories or embed the videos. They shouldn't be that hard to find if you want to see and read the details.
With this new storm pouring into the Chandaleurs and Breton Sound, I keep expecting to see the pelicans returned again to the bayou, seeking refuge from their outraged Refuge. They're not here, though. They're out in the Sound, wheeling and diving in water turned deadly without their knowing.
The state flag shows a picture of a pelican on the nest, her wings spread. Beneath her are three hungry little ones, which she feeds by piercing her breast and drawing a drop of blood for each. Since 1860 she has nested on a field of blue, showing us the importance of self-sacrifice for the generations that follow.
One wonders just how much blood she has left.