"Oh, what a strange bird is the pelican, his beak can hold more than his belly can."
Literature doesn't do justice to the fine flying qualities of the pelican, the scruffy bird of nursery-rhyme fame. The actions of these birds as they filch and pilfer fishermen's bait on the white sand at Cocoa Beach on Florida's Space Coast belie their tremendous flying ability. They truly become a flying classroom for any aerodynamicist.
I became fascinated with this strange bird while on numerous NASA assignments at the Kennedy Space Center. I quickly noted that this fat and wondrously ugly creature can manage his aerodynamic energy with the very best of the soaring birds like hawks and eagles. We just never notice how he does it while diving and plunging for fish. Now I sit for hours on the balcony of our Florida condo, watching this bird travel miles while barely flapping a wing. I also watch as he uses the towering vortices from the high-rise condos to climb high enough to glide back to his evening roosting place on the river behind Port Canaveral.
One of the pelican's fascinating tricks is to travel literally for miles, milking lift out of the smallest wave. On days when the Atlantic is almost flat, with only six- to eight-inch waves gliding towards shore, the brown pelicans will ride that invisible small cushion of air being pushed upward in front of the wave. An entire flock, in trail in a tight formation not more than one wingspan above the water, can glide thousands of feet parallel to the shore without flapping a wing. During this time they actually increase their speed. This enables them to pull up sharply without stalling when the wave diminishes and to do a neat wing-over maneuver out to sea to pick up the next wave. Thus begins their next free ride to feeding areas along the shore or wherever their favorite meal might be lurking just below the surface. This free ride can propel the whole flock from the Port Canaveral area, nine miles south of us, to Patrick Air Force Base — with virtually zero expenditure of energy.
Watching pelicans fish is just as educational. Here they must expend energy while flapping their mighty wings to reach an altitude of 50 to 75 feet above the ocean. Once those laser eyes spot a fish, the pelican pulls up sharply and performs a roll-in maneuver emulating the very best dive-bombing techniques from our jet attack-bombing days. Or were we emulating the pelican? Watching with binoculars, I swear I can almost see the feathers on the trailing edge of the wings stand up as the bird approaches the critical angle of attack near stall at the apogee of the roll-in maneuver. As he reaches a steady state in the dive, he controls the dive path by folding or unfolding his wings. This technique keeps the bearing line to the bullseye in perfect alignment. Of course, the final smash into the water would be considered very poor technique for a true dive bomber pilot, but the pelican's beak is built to take many more impact Gs than the typical F/A-18 or A-4.
After rising to the surface and gulping down the fish he just caught, Mr. Pelican again displays his uncanny instinctive knowledge of aerodynamics. He waits until a wave is almost upon him before flapping his wings and pumping his feet madly to break the surface tension holding him on the water. Just as the wave reaches him, the pelican launches himself into that cushion of rising air preceding the wave. With a quick retraction of the landing gear, once airborne, he settles into his glide along the front of the wave, gaining speed to effect a quick pull-up to his 50-foot fishing altitude.
As evening approaches, the flock heads back to its evening nesting site in the Indian River's marshy areas near Port Canaveral. The pelicans again form up in that long line, racing along the front of the waves; then they pull up and turn gracefully on a direct heading toward the shore and the manmade mountains called condos. Here, with an onshore breeze hitting the buildings, there is a tremendous column of air rising very close to each structure. The graceful birds, gliding very close to each balcony or just above the top floor, slide from condo to condo, making their way back home with nary a flap of the wing unless the distance between condos is too great. They tend to glide down until reaching that rising column of air at the next "mountain." Of course, some of the flock seem content just to ride the waves as they did in the morning on their way to the fishing area.
I can't help being caught up in the beauty of the irony that here on Florida's Space Coast, home of the most complex flying machine ever dreamed of by man (and the world's heaviest glider at the end of a mission), lives the brown pelican, whose flying skills must have been imprinted in its brain cells many eons ago, when mankind was still struggling to walk the earth.
