High Masculine Tones

Rapture is all too rare in my dull existence, but five years back I enjoyed stacked hours of bliss camped out on a remote beach on the Sonoran coast of the Sea of Cortes. The stark desert landscape, the crashing waves, fine food and intoxicants, and little else -- we spent our days sitting on the sand and soaking up the sun-drenched solitary wonder of it all.

It wasn't all calm and contemplation. An action-packed drama played out before us... I am far from a birdwatcher by temperament, but I was overwhelmed by the spectacle of brown pelicans cruising in formation up and down the coastline, holding their 8 foot wingspans steady, gliding on the turbulent air over the waves. Periodically one would drift to sixty feet up, freeze for a long moment, pull back its wings and crash into the water like a bolt of lightning. More often than not, it would emerge triumphant with a fish from under the surface.

I never tired of watching them. And I still summon awe and fear when I remember floating on my back in the salty buoyant water and spotting a few directly above me -- one of them pulled up in that unmistakable pre-strike pose, and for a horrifying second I realized how I must have looked, a giant pale feast languishing on the surface, just waiting to be snapped up.

Eagles, hawks and falcons get sports teams named after them, but pelicans might as well be pigeons for all the respect they get in the popular mind. In terms of power and grace, and sheer mastery of existence, you can keep your more notorious birds of prey and give me a brown pelican any time. They are a sublime form of being.

All this a self-indulgent preamble to give you some sense of why this story just sickens me:

Pelicans are crash-landing on to pavements and roads in Arizona after mistaking the shimmer of sun-baked surfaces for stretches of water.

More than 30 brown pelicans have injured themselves landing on mirages in the past two weeks, according to wildlife officials.

With temperatures around 110F (43C), the birds have been treated for dehydration and emaciation as well as for injuries suffered during landing.

Experts believe the birds are heading inland to hunt for fish because of food shortages along the west coast caused by hot weather drying out waterways.

"They try to splash down but it's asphalt and it's bam!" a spokesman for the Arizona Game and Fish Department said.