Pelican Island

We took a short trip south to Pelican Island. Pelican Island is the country's first wildlife preserve. The island itself is actually inaccessible. Well, that's not entirely accurate. You can get there by boat, but you're not supposed to step foot on the island. People used to hunt down the birds that nest there and use their feathers for ladies hats. Somebody, Paul Kroegel, decided that wasn't ok and that too many of the birds were being killed to the point of extinction. I even read something while we were there that said like 80 species of birds that once lived there are now extinct due to over hunting. So in 1901 the Audubon Society made the area protected for non game birds and 4 people made wardens to protect the area and the wading birds there. 2 of those guys were killed while trying to protect these birds. Then in 1903 President Theodore Roosevelt made it the country's first wildlife preserve. It was pretty interesting to read about all the effort it took to get credibility for a wildlife preserve, both in the sense of people respecting the law and not trespassing and the fact that the country could see a need to keep a piece of beautiful land from being inhabited, fished, and farmed.

The board walk path leading to the overlook. They had all the wildlife refuges listed in the order they were established, starting with the most recent and ending with the first... Pelican Island. We were so excited to find Camas, which we've been to several times while in Idaho. 

A lake that we walked past before getting to the Pelican Island overlook. 

Ivan did not know how to work the telescope thing. This is the overlook for Pelican Island. I can't believe I didn't get any pictures of the actual island!

There's a nice boardwalk trail to walk and it goes by a little lake, then you get out to the overlook for Pelican Island. They call the place where these birds nest a rookery. We saw wood storks, pelicans, tri-colored herons, and some really cool lizards. The lizards were all over the place, and we were really curious about them, so we looked them up. They are called the anole, also known as the American chameleon because they can change colors. The males have this little flap of skin (dewlap) they can project out and it's very brightly colored. Ivan and Charlotte were fascinated by it.

Alligators in the water. Always. 

Tricolored heron

Alligator snapping turtle

Brown pelican. These guys are so cool. They fly over the water and when they see a fish, they nose-dive the water and resurface with a fish in their mouths. 

Wood stork, not my favorite but it makes me feel like we're in Africa or something.

Here's that lizard. We saw some green ones with that same dewlap. 

On the way to the preserve, Ivan had an accident. Not his first, and definitely not his last, but probably the worst. He pooped, and when we changed him we could see why he couldn't hold it. But this was the one time I didn't have a change of clothes for him! Go figure. And this was before we even got out of the car to explore. So we put one of Charlotte's diapers on him and let him run around without pants on, praying nobody else was there to see. I tried to keep him in the hiking backpack, but he wanted to run free, so there he is without pants, in a diaper that's way too small, and getting bug bites all over his legs.

I tried to only take pictures of him from the shirt up, then you couldn't tell. But I needed to blog about something!