California shorebirds face future in illuminating ‘Pelican Dreams’
They’re not cute like penguins. The face of a pelican is mostly beak, with a small brown eye on either side and a little tuft of fluff on the crown. They don’t have a vocabulary of funny noises like seagulls, nor do they sing like mockingbirds. And yet this lowly seabird, specifically the California brown pelican, is the star of the absorbing and illuminating documentary Pelican Dreams.
San Francisco-based filmmaker Judy Irving has pretty much cornered the market on avian documentaries. Her last film was the irresistible The Wild Parrots of Telegraph Hill, about an improbable flock of tropical birds in the canyons of the city and the singular man who made it his life’s work to care for them. It was one of my top 10 movies of 2003. Pelican Dreams does not have quite the same Shakespearean range of high drama, low comedy, romance, and heartache as the earlier film, but as a glimpse into the private lives of these wild shorebirds and the challenges they face, it’s often fascinating.
The California brown pelican is a critter dear to our hearts here in Santa Cruz; they like to hang out on the wharf, preening their feathers on the railings, or circling the Boardwalk or the harbor in their flying-wedge formations. We see them in such abundance around here it’s surprising to realize that, like so many wild species, they are in a constant struggle for survival. Filmmaker Irving digs up newsreel footage from 1969, when an expedition to their principal breeding ground in the Channel Islands revealed they were on the brink of extinction due to the prevalence of the chemical DDT (since banned) in the atmosphere, which was destroying eggs before they could hatch.
The species has made a comeback since then, and Irving’s interest in the nature and habits of these birds is piqued one day when a disoriented brown pelican is found wandering around the Golden Gate Bridge, stopping traffic. When a heroic tow truck driver rescues the bird, bundles it into a crate, and delivers it to a wildlife rescue hospital northeast of the city, Irving decides to follow the bird—and the story.
At the hospital, Irving meets bird doctor Monte Merrick, who so strongly believes the nature of the birds briefly in his care should be kept wild that he refuses to name them as if they were pets. (Irving decides to call “her” bird GiGi—for Golden Gate—anyway.) He directs the filmmaker to Santa Barbara Island in the Channel Islands, where she documents the mating, nest-building, and nesting habits of the species. There the fight for survival begins, with the bigger chicks acing out their smaller siblings in the race to get sustenance out of the mother bird’s beak pouch.
Irving is on hand to document first flights around the island, when the gawky hatchlings suddenly assume the soaring grandeur of their species in their natural element. And she lets us linger over what she calls the “high dive”—the pelicans’ famous beak-first descent into the water to catch fish—so we can really appreciate the artistry involved. From high above, the bird spots its prey, wheels around in the air, then spirals downward, upside down, tucking its wings close and far back along its body at the last second, to enter the water like an arrow.
Irving talks to Laurie Harvey, a bird surveyor for a research group in Davis, and Bill and Dani Nicholson, who rehabilitate wounded pelicans, ducks, geese, gulls and other wildlife in their suburban backyard. Skipper “Wacky Jacky” Douglas, who runs her own sport-fishing charter boat service, talks about irresponsible fishermen who filet their catch and throw the discarded fish parts back into the ocean; later, we see Merrick removing an entire tuna skull out of a pelican’s narrow throat.
Other man-made dangers like tangled fishing lines, swallowed fish hooks, oil spills, and climate change (which causes various “weird” bird behaviors) also remind us how derelict we’ve become as caretakers to the wildlife around us. But Irving doesn’t scold us so much as encourage us to marvel anew at the wonders of the natural world, literally right in our own backyard.
PELICAN DREAMS
*** (out of four)
A film by Judy Irving. Not rated. 80 minutes.
