Some pelicans mistaking asphalt for lakes

[MikeG]

PHOENIX - More than 30 endangered brown pelicans have crashed onto sidewalks and roads in Arizona, mistaking the heat-induced shimmer of the paved surface for lakes and creeks.

They try to land on the water, but it's asphalt and it's `Bam! That doesn't feel so good,'" said Sandy Cate, director of the Arizona Game and Fish Department's wildlife center at Adobe Mountain in north Phoenix.

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=624&ncid=624&e=2&u=/ap/20040709/ap_on_sc/brf_fooled_pelicans

There is a creature dumber than W.

[parasim]

1. I used to have a gaggle of Canada Geese who thought

the roof of my house was a pond or something. Used to crack me up.

[Eye and Monkey]

2. The pelican is NOT dumber than Dubya

Dubya wasn't trying to land, though he may have been coming down hard.

[DRoseDARs]

3. Natural selection in action. It's a beautiful thing.

Clearly, these pelicans are degenerates in the pelican gene pool if they're flying hundreds of miles inland away from the ocean coasts(their usual habitat) and deep into the desert in order to find fish. I'm happy to see the stupid among their ranks die. Good riddance.

[MisterP]

4. you wouldn't say that if you worked with them, like I do

there's the Salton Sea...

[DRoseDARs]

5. I feel no pity for Darwin Award recipients or nominees...

...so why should I feel it for ocean birds that fly away from the hard-to-miss ocean, filled with water (home to fish), and into the vast expanse of very obvious desert, filled with sands and clays and rocks (not home to fish), that makes up the southwestern US and Mexico in search of fish? :nopity:

And the Salton Sea is a great deal closer to the Pacific Ocean than Yuma or Phoenix, Arizona.



Nope, sorry. Still not feeling the pity. :shrug:

[GoddessOfGuinness]

6. Have you witnessed this kind of behavior in your work?

It seems like something relatively inexpensive could be added to the asphalt to change its appearance.

I didn't realize they were endangered. We used to see them all the time along the east coast beaches.

[MisterP]

7. I don't know how to stop dark asphalt from shimmering

I guess the only solution is less asphalt. Some of course, would prefer to laugh uproariously, as they would when sparrows hit their windows and die.