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By Root 3811 0

brown pelicans, he had carefully studied the freshwater white pelicans of North Dakota and Minnesota, who left their lakes near the Canadian border and migrated to the Indian River region in Florida like clockwork every autumn. Although T.R. had never been to Pelican Island, a teeming bird rookery, he had read a great deal about the place, thanks to Chapman. Situated in a narrow lagoon located near Vero Beach on the Atlantic coast of Florida, Pelican Island, a five-and-a-half-acre dollop of shells and mangrove hammocks, was abundant with flocks of wading birds, something akin to the Galápagos Islands (in miniature) when Charles Darwin began his evolutionary studies in 1835. If Roosevelt paddled around the island he would have heard the loud murmur of bird chatter, a dozen species all singing in different keys, yet all somehow in unison, giving the Indian River rookery the distinct feel of a God-ordained sanctuary. Exuberant streams of birds actually congregated on Pelican Island like figures in a timeless dream. Great blue herons, for example, lingered for long and often hot hours, statue-still while somehow still managing to groom their breeding plumage, including ornate onyx head feathers that seductively lured a mate. Reading about the calls, stillnesses, and hesitations of these long-legged birds fascinated Roosevelt no end.

The most prominent resident of Pelican Island, however, was its namesake—the brown pelican (Pelecanus occidentalis.) Chapman had taken dozens of photographs of brown pelicans congregating there, often carrying silver-colored fish in their elongated beaks as they flew contentedly over the tumbling waters of the Indian River. Studying Chapman’s photographs in his 1900 book Bird Studies with a Camera, Roosevelt knew these funny-looking birds were of incalculably greater value alive than dead; if the brown pelican passed into extinction, Florida, he believed, would lose one of its most enchanting charms.

Clearly, Roosevelt understood that wildlife had a sacred order and pelicans were part of this grand design or teleology. For more than 2 million years, by adapting to changed circumstances, prowling for fish by turning downwind, half-folding their wings and then almost belly-flopping into brackish or saline water, they had avoided extinction. With their huge heads submerged, the brown pelicans’ narrow beaks—the attached pouches serving as a dip net—scooped fish amid swarms of mosquitoes and midges in Florida’s glassy lagoons.19 For all their innate awkwardness, these playful birds were actually very efficient hunters. By dive-bombing for mullets from as high as fifty or sixty feet in the air, a healthy brown pelican could consume up to seven pounds of fish per day. Their daily hunting range was a radius of about fifty to sixty miles. And it wasn’t just the frenetic avian activity of pelicans, egrets, ibises, and roseate spoonbills on Pelican Island that Roosevelt embraced as a biological hymnal. He studied the state’s weather and its terrain, and kept records of its climate. He loved every little thing that grew in wild Florida, studying the beach mice, the green anoles, the gopher tortoises, the ants, the sea turtles, and the osprey, all with biological sympathy.

Ornithologists like Chapman who journeyed to wild Florida in the 1880s learned to love the shimmering wild egrets and elegant spoonbills that populated the rookeries, but only the brown pelicans made them laugh out loud. These were the clowns of the bird world. Their combination of short legs, long necks, and four webbed toes (which enhanced their swimming ability) made them seem clumsy. Because their bodies were so heavy, takeoff was something of a burlesque act. More than a few bird students (like Roosevelt) noted that when a pelican flew solo—which was often—it left an indelible impression. At times the pelicans resembled helium balloons with bricks attached to their feet, frantically flapping to get airborne, seemingly feverish with fatigue, desperate to defy the law of gravity. Nevertheless, they always managed to lift off.

Underlying