January 13, 2012
Mark and I volunteered again for the Channel Islands National Park over New Year’s, walking the trails on Santa Barbara Island and watching for the return of the pelicans. Although not many have arrived yet, the island is ready for them: After three years of native plant restoration it looks lush and verdant, with yellow coreopsis flowers just starting to bloom.
November 27, 2011
Rachel Carson wrote of a “silent spring” in which no birds would sing in her classic, paradigm-shifting 1962 book, predicting by several years what biologists found on Anacapa Island in 1969: hundreds of pelican nests with crushed eggshells, all due to DDT. Adult pelicans had eaten DDT-laced fish, which interfered with calcium production, making shells so thin that when parents tried to incubate them, they crushed them instead.
These iconic Channel Islands images helped launch the environmental movement, and led to the banning of DDT in 1972. Brown pelicans were declared “endangered” even before there was an Endangered Species Act. Last summer, in a garage in Grant’s Pass, Oregon, we retrieved 16mm footage of the Anacapa discovery, thanks to the son of the filmmaker, Dave Siddon. Here is a still from that footage, which we recently had transferred to HD files. The same DDT, on the ocean floor near LA, is now interfering with the nesting success of California condors, and the same scientist, Bob Risebrough, who discovered the problem in 1969 is now working on the condor issue, making history contemporary, and showing us how long-lived these contaminants actually are.
People who love pelicans in Morro Bay have started a new program called the “Fish to Farm Compost Project,” providing special garbage cans to charter fishing boats, so that when deckhands filet fish they throw the heads and skeletons in the can, rather than over the side. A composter picks up the cans free of charge, and makes fish compost that he sells to gardeners. This project solves a common cause of pelican mortality: Many die with large fish heads and bony skeletons stuck in their necks. In this image you can see the birds still hoping for freebies, and me filming from the dock. This simple, innovative project deserves to spread all along the Pacific coast.
This fall we again visited Morro, who now sports his full adult plumage. I have to say, not only is he a handsome bird, but Morro is fast becoming the star of this movie. Not quite free, because of his injured wing, but not captive either, because he can leave the yard if he so chooses, Morro has maximum freedom of choice. One of his choices is to perch on top of the chaise lounge. I’d wanted to film this, and finally got there at the right time. Morro is so comfortable in the yard that he has started getting curious about the buildings, too. More on that in the movie. I don’t want to give everything away!
October 5, 2011
One of the images that launched this film and that stays with me is this: I was in the Marin Headlands, standing on a cliff in thick fog, listening to waves crashing below, feeling the wind. I couldn’t see a thing. Out of the whiteness soared a pelican, who flew past me silently, large and ancient, then disappeared back into the fog. The whole encounter lasted only a few seconds, yet I felt I’d had a glimpse of something mysterious and ultimately ungraspable, like life. Since then I have wanted to film that vision, because it also defines wildness for me. I’ve tried at that exact location with no luck; have tried at the Pt Bonita Lighthouse with no luck; have tried at the San Mateo coast with some luck, and will keep trying. You’ll see whether I’ve succeeded or not in the final film.
Besides fog, this past summer has been all about fishing. I knew that getting tangled up in fishing line with fish hooks stuck in your pouch is one of the most common pelican injuries seen by wildlife rehabilitators; but how to be there when it happens? I was location scouting at the fishing pier at Fort Baker, where I’d planned to film another pelican release, when a young bird who’d been floating dangerously close to a man’s fishing line suddenly lunged at it as he reeled it up, grabbing three hooks with three small silver fish. All of a sudden, that pelican was hooked and the fisherman didn’t know what to do. (Often they cut the line, and the bird is left in the water all entangled, to die.) I asked him to slowly pull the bird along the pier to shore, like a dog on a leash, and ran to get rescuers from WildCare.
“B-52,” named for her band, was a very lucky bird: She was immediately rescued; experts snipped off fishing line and extracted hooks from her beak and pouch, and after rehabilitation she was released at Tomales Bay. I got all of her story on film except the initial moments. Often in documentary situations you get pulled in, becoming more than just a bystander. You happen to be there, you’re needed, and you do it. “B-52” was the first pelican I helped save.
Other fishing-related sequences shot in July, August, and September include: pelicans being fed by Wacky Jacky’s crew and by charter fishermen at a fillet table, Monte Merrick rescuing a fish-oiled pelican from a north coast harbor island, and my own private release of a pelican I call “no name, no band” back to the wild at Shelter Cove. (Since no one else had time, and since I was driving that way, I volunteered. It’s fun to drive with a pelican in your car.) The bird, obviously, had no name and no Federal band. And that felt good: Back to the wild! Back to mystery.
July 7, 2011
When young pelicans are finished with their rehabilitation – they’ve eaten lots of fish, they’re waterproof, any injuries they’ve had are healed – sometimes Dani brings them to her yard for awhile, where they release themselves when they’re ready. They fly from perch to perch, higher and higher: from the cages, to the wooden gate, to the house roof, and finally to the sky, where they circle around, get their bearings, and soar west to the ocean, less than half a mile away. It’s a beautiful sight. Last week we filmed several birds releasing themselves, and recorded Morro’s reactions. He watched them take off, then hopped up on a banana palm stump and flapped his wings, making several short fly-hops to the grassy yard. It’s as far as he can go with his bad wing. In the photo above Morro has settled back into his afternoon routine as a yardbird, sitting on a small table next to Dani in the hammock, very interested in the stick she’s holding. A few seconds later, Morro grabbed the stick, shook it, and flung it away. I had no idea before I started this film how much pelicans have in common with dogs.
May 18, 2011
Pelicans have a seriously silly side, which Stephen McLaren captures in his photos of American white pelicans who’ve taken up residence in London’s St. James’s Park. I hope to be able to use several of Stephen’s photos in “Pelican Dreams.”
We filmed another funny training session with Pardito at WildCare, where he did the “turn” successfully about half the time, but often looked quizzically at Mary and ending up nipping her leg.
In Cayucos, Morro is settling into his back-yard digs, learning to play catch with Bill (the day I was there Bill threw celery stalks, then fish; Morro much preferred the fish). He knows he can’t fly, so instead he finds sticks to fling and tables to sit on while searching, literally, for his place in the sun.
A note: Lately we’ve been shooting full HD with a Canon camera, getting used to the settings and the fact that it records to files rather than film or tape. A whole new world.
March 15, 2011
Years before “The Wild Parrots of Telegraph Hill,” I produced and directed another feature documentary (with Chris Beaver and Ruth Landy) entitled “Dark Circle,” about the nuclear industry. The film explains the links between nuclear weapons and power, and includes basic information about how nuclear plants work, how a core meltdown happens, and how likely that scenario is for California’s Diablo Canyon Nuclear Plant. Diablo, like Fukushima in Japan, is an aging nuclear plant on an active earthquake fault, and its operator, PG&E, has applied for a 20-year license extension. If you haven’t seen “Dark Circle,” now might be the time. Click here.
“Pardito,” WildCare’s new resident brown pelican, is learning how to jump up, down, turn around, and follow Mary Pounder, Education Specialist, but when we filmed recently, Pardito seemed to have taught himself to bite Mary’s leg every time she said “turn”! It’s very funny, and will be a good sequence in “Pelican Dreams.” We’ll film another training session soon, and will follow Pardito to his debut appearance at an elementary school. Like Morro, he has an injured wing that won't heal. Like Gigi, he spent some time at IBRRC's pelican aviary, but could never fly high enough or strong enough to convince his caretakers that he could dive, catch fish, and function successfully as a wild pelican. Pardito is a mischievous young bird, "like a teenager," says Mary, and will do well in schools, she hopes.
I visited my mom in Florida in January, and filmed at one of the oldest seabird sanctuaries in the country: Suncoast, on the Gulf Coast near St. Petersburg. Disabled adult pelicans nevertheless breed, nest, and raise young at the sanctuary, and when the chicks are old enough to fly, the mesh roof is removed from the enclosure and they fly to the beach nearby, coming back if they get scared or hungry, and eventually joining the wild flocks. I was thrilled to be able to get closeups of 2-and-3-week old babies at Suncoast.
December 2, 2010
Film critic Michael Fox recently posted an interview on the San Francisco Film Society’s web site entitled “Irving Glides from Parrots to Pelicans.”
And speaking of parrots, “The Wild Parrots of Telegraph Hill” will be broadcast again on national public television: return engagement! The national airdate is Tuesday, December 28th. Check local listings; most stations will air it at 9:30 or 10 PM. For San Francisco Bay Area viewers, KQED scheduled the film on January 5th at 9:30 PM and KQED LIFE will show it on January 6th at 8:30 PM.
We’re pleased that the national PBS series, Independent Lens, extended its contract, so the film will be broadcast several more times over the next two years in addition to the Christmas week broadcasts.
A short parrots-and-people update can be found here.
September 4, 2010
“Pelican Dreams” had its first high-speed HD shoot (120 frames per second) in the Channel Islands, focusing on young pelicans playing and diving. We got some dreamy sunset dive shots in Smuggler’s Cove looking toward Anacapa; see photo at left. Another shot I liked shows an adult and a fledgling flying together; when the adult takes an elegant dive the youngster flails around twisting in the air and dives too. They both hit the water at the same time. The adult gets a fish but the young one doesn’t. (“More to learn!” The little one is probably thinking. “I’m sticking with this big guy.”) They take off together into the sunset. Seeing the action slowed down by a factor of five revealed another way that pelicans can be compared to dogs: They wag their tails! After diving, after playing keep-away with a piece of kelp, while swimming or preening: I’d never really noticed how often they wag their wide, stubby tails.
June 22, 2010
Normally I like to point my camera at things that no one else is pointing at. When I started “Pelican Dreams” I had no idea that brown pelicans would be at the epicenter of the front-page environmental disaster in the Gulf of Mexico—so soon after being taken off the Endangered Species List. Pelicans mirror our stewardship of the environment, particularly our coasts, and it doesn’t look good for them in Louisiana. The Gulf Oil Spill will become part of the film: one of the myriad problems they encounter while trying to find food, migrate, and reproduce. But I’m also interested in their personalities, and last month I was able to spend more time with a lonely pelican named Morro. His two companions had recovered and flown away, and Morro was left with chickens, a goose, a duck, and…his friend in the mirror. (He has a bad wing that isn’t healed enough for sustained flight.) I filmed him bringing sticks to his buddy, preening alongside him, looking behind the mirror to see where he was, and just standing there contemplating another pelican. I feel like I’m actually getting to know this bird, and I already love him.
May 12, 2010
I’ve been logging footage that we shot over the past few months in Morro Bay, Eureka, and Arcata, but my heart has been with the poor pelicans trying to survive and raise chicks despite the enormous, toxic, growing pool of oil in the Gulf of Mexico. The photo at left, shot by local photographer Colin Gift, shows one of our own brown pelicans diving into clean, fish-filled Aquatic Park Cove last summer. I read yesterday that pelicans in the Gulf are “diving into oily water.” What a horrible image. Pelican Dreams will include footage of this historic oil-spill disaster. The footage is being shot for IBRRC, the seabird rescue center that took care of Gigi. IBRRC staff are now assisting rescue efforts in the Gulf states.
April 9, 2010
Wildlife rehabilitators are unique individuals. Laura Corsiglia is a surrealist painter (see photo at left), working with her husband Monte Merrick, a poet. While Gigi was in human hands, Monte and Laura provided consistent care. Now they’re freelancing along the west coast with a group called bird ally x, helping out where needed, and pursuing their art projects. In March we filmed “The Perfect Room,” their performance art salon, and shot some scenes in the Winnebago where they live, as well as their prep for an aquatic bird workshop at the National Wildlife Rehabilitator Conference.
Bob Risebrough lent the project his Anacapa slides from the late 60s, which show many nests with thin, broken eggshells caused by DDT. Because of a lawsuit filed by the Environmental Defense Fund, DDT was eventually banned and the pelicans made a comeback. Bob's slides will help tell that story visually.
In late March we showed the film clip at CA Audubon’s annual staff retreat in Pt. Reyes, and are excited about partnership possibilities. Anna Weinstein, Audubon's Seabird Conservation Coordinator, will accompany our August shoot in Anacapa.
March 2, 2010
Severe winter storms and a sudden disappearance of fish resulted in a deluge of starving adult pelicans at wildlife rehabilitation centers up and down the Pacific coast in January and February. We followed Monte Merrick, the rehabber who cared for Gigi at IBRRC, to Morro Bay when he and his wife traveled there to help Dani Nicholson at Pacific Wildlife Care. Adults like the one in the photo know how to fish, and this bird was headed south toward breeding grounds in the Channel Islands or Baja, but there was nothing to eat! Many were saved, many not. (If you come across a photo of a pelican in an unlikely spot like a freeway ramp, I need these kinds of images to tell the story.)
Thanks to the Dean Witter Foundation’s recent $10,000 grant, we are able to stay in production and continue logging and transcribing the footage that has been shot so far. To date we have six hours of film and fifteen hours of video, with much more to come, including fledglings learning how to dive (very comical), pelicans tangling—sometimes literally—with fishermen, and the beautiful ballet of pelicans in flight.
January 11, 2010
We did our first shoot in central California last week. Dani Nicholson, a wildlife rehabilitator who works with Pacific Wildlife Care in Morro Bay, also sometimes takes care of pelicans in her yard, along with nine chickens and a goose. We filmed this peaceful menagerie, including “Morro,” the young bird in the photo, who has a hurt wing but perches easily on a planter. Dani knows a lot about pelicans, having worked with them for eight years, and she just got her first tattoo – a pelican flying across her back – which says a lot about how she feels about them. We’ll film her again when the fledglings start showing up next summer, and we’ll follow Morro’s progress as well. It isn’t broken, but his wing doesn’t seem to want to heal.
September 1, 2009
Last winter thousands of brown pelicans stayed too long at East Sand Island (near the mouth of the Columbia River between Oregon and Washington), because the weather stayed warm and the fishing was good. When they finally migrated south, many were caught in snowstorms and got frostbite on their feet and pouches. Disoriented, they turned up in odd places, like freeway on-ramps. On August 8 & 9, camping out on East Sand Island in the rain, we filmed huge crowds of pelicans on the beach. It was like Coney Island for pelicans! We hope they all migrate south in time this year.
July 14, 2009
The pelican chicks are now full-grown and are learning to fly. After twelve weeks on dry land, it must be quite a thrill to take to the air! We filmed several chicks fledging like this one. Sometimes they circle around and fly back to the slope where they were born, but eventually they find their way to that big flat blue expanse they’ve been staring at for so long, and they discover that it’s wet, and they can swim! Their large webbed feet cause pelicans to waddle on land, but they’re perfect for paddling. We filmed young birds poking their beaks underwater, slicing sideways at the seaweed, and making short tentative dives. They have a lot to learn. Soon they’ll migrate north, and I hope to see some of them in San Francisco Bay. This film shoot concludes Gigi’s “backstory”: her life as a hatchling, young chick, and fledgling, before she landed on the GG Bridge.
May 12, 2009
Pelican chicks are growing fast and hassling their parents (and each other) as you read this. We just returned from another week on Santa Barbara Island, where we filmed a nice age range—from tiny greyish “lizards” to large fluffy white chicks—being fed by their parents. The chicks poke around inside the parent’s pouch, looking for fish. It’s a funny, raucous scene. The pelican parents seem patient, tired, and sometimes annoyed by their always-hungry offspring, who sound a bit like bleating lambs. Later, as adults, these chicks will lose their hoarse, demanding voices: one of the major differences between pelicans and parrots!
April 10, 2009
We just finished a week of shooting on Santa Barbara Island (in the Channel Islands National Park off Ventura CA), and had good luck filming brown pelicans courting, mating, and nesting. Here’s a shot of two lovely breeding birds—note the bright red pouches—building a nest on a slope with an ocean view. The male has just arrived at the nest site, and gallantly presents his mate with some grass for the nest. Gigi was probably born on the Channel Islands, and these birds might have been her parents, who knows? We will follow this pair and several others through the nesting season, hoping to film very young purplish chicks, older fluffy white chicks, and brown-feathered youngsters ready to fly.
February 8, 2009
Pelican Media recently received a kick-off grant of $25,000 from the Wallace Alexander Gerbode Foundation toward the production of Pelican Dreams. Thanks to President Tom Layton and the other members of the Gerbode Board of Directors, we have upgraded our editing equipment and are beginning to log and edit what we've shot so far.
January 12, 2009
You probably saw on the news that adult pelicans have been showing up in odd places like freeways with mysterious ailments. We wonder if Gigi might have been an “early warning” of this problem, or whether she was just a confused young bird who happened to land on the bridge. In any case, last Friday we filmed some of the pelicans who have been arriving at the IBRRC (seabird rescue center) in Fairfield. We filmed a pelican “in-take” exam, and an adult being washed with soapy water, as well as these pelicans, who are resting in the center’s large aviary. No one knows what’s causing this recent, widespread (up and down the West Coast) problem. Click here to read a story in the LA Times.
January 5, 2009
We just spent “a week on a deserted island” – literally – watching for the arrival of pelicans from the north. Santa Barbara Island is one of two places in the Channel Islands National Park, in southern CA, where “our” NorCal brown pelicans breed. This volunteer work for the park service also served as a location scout for my upcoming shoot (probably in May or June) of pelicans nesting and raising chicks. Gigi may have been born on Santa Barbara Island, and I got to experience what she might have seen and heard as a youngster: sea lions, gulls, elephant seals, cormorants, lovely weather turning cloudy and windy, and the quiet and peacefulness of an island without cars, people, or lights. What a change it must have been for her to find herself on the roadway of the Golden Gate Bridge!