This is the time of year when the Georgia birders’ chat line is filled with reports of huge sandhill crane flocks flying high over the state in spectacular V-shaped formations.
This week, though, the crane reports had to vie with accounts of two rare majestic avian visitors — white pelicans — at Murphey-Candler Park lake in Brookhaven in DeKalb County. “They are such a gorgeous sight out there on the lake,” said Suzanne Dabney, who lives near the park.
Birders say that the white pelicans’ presence in 135-acre Murphey-Candler Park is a record for DeKalb — the first time the species has ever been seen in the county. Some of the several birders, including me, who flocked to the park this week for a glimpse of the pelicans also said it was a “life bird” for them — the first time they had eyeballed the species after years of bird watching.
The white pelican is an awe-inspiring bird with a wingspan of up to 9 feet, one foot short of the height of a basketball hoop. “The species is of particular interest because of its large body size, conspicuous white and black coloration, graceful flight, highly developed cooperative foraging, and the somewhat comic proportions of its large bill and pouch,” according to the Birds of North America Online.
The Annotated Checklist of Georgia Birds lists the white pelican as "accidental" in the Piedmont; there are no records of it in the mountains. The species breeds in freshwater lakes in west central Canada and the U.S. Northwest and migrates to winter grounds in Mexico, Central America and other areas.
As for sandhill cranes, they are now migrating south to winter grounds in central Florida, the Okefenokee Swamp in southwest Georgia and other points south.
Few natural spectacles in Georgia generate as much thrill as a huge, V-shaped flock of sandhills winging their way high overhead.
The birds often can be heard long before they are seen. Their loud, sonorous, trumpeting notes sound like a huge flock of chirping birds. “I heard the noise of the sandhill cranes and looked up and the sky was filled with wave after wave of birds,” Tom Laubenthal of Marietta reported on the Georgia birders’ chat line. He witnessed the spectacle from a Cobb County shopping mall.
IN THE SKY: The moon, now in new phase, will be a thin crescent low in the west just after dark Saturday night, said David Dundee, Tellus Science Museum astronomer. Mercury is very low in the east just before dawn. Venus is in the west at dusk and sets about three hours later. Mars rises out of the east about four hours before dawn. Jupiter rises out of the east just after dark and is visible all night. Saturn is very low in the east just before dawn.
