A Pod of Pelicans at the Entrance

The Sundancers (camera club) had a meet at The Entrance this afternoon. I just made it after finishing the visiting. Every afternoon at 3.30 pm the local pelicans are fed at this spot. I can vouch it is in rain hail or shine as it was certainly miserable weather again today. You can just see a woman with yellow washing up gloves on the left who had a big tub of fish donated by a local Fish and chip shop. There was another woman who was also feeding and had a microphone and gave us a running commentary. Just over twenty years ago, the pelican feeding started by accident when staff from the fish and chip shop would throw out scraps. It became such a ritual that whenever the staff were late the pelicans would cross the road and come up to the shop to be fed.

The women was throwing fish generally into the group and there was much fighting and squabbling. Some of the smaller ones (females) were hand fed. Here you can see the pelican is literally being fed the hand as well as the fish. The two women seemed to know quite a few of the pelicans and had names for them and they also keep an eye on their health looking out for fish hooks and the like.