Big White Bird

A High Rock Lake resident was fishing on the lake when he saw a flock of massive white birds fly over and land a couple of hundred yards away. He kind of knew they were out of place for the southeast so he grabbed his camera and emailed the TV Station.

I was handed an assignment sheet with his information on it and a link to his picture of the flock of white pelicans. It turns out that the American White Pelican is almost NEVER found in the southeast. They can be found in Florida but they hug the Gulf Coast as they migrate west and north toward Canada staying mostly west of the Mississippi.



I met Michael Axelrod at his house near Southmont and we proceeded to find the Pelicans for the news story I was assigned to produce.

With a cold wind blowing on the lake which is drawn down several feet below normal for the winter, getting around on the northern reaches of the lake were challenging. We got stuck once and when we were moving the wind was biting cold but we kept searching for the better part of almost 2 hours.

Just about to give up, we spotted 2 of the birds floating about 500 yards from our location. After getting video of this pair we headed back and 5 more birds found us.

The story turned out pretty good.