Pelicans!

I've told you many times in the past about the local river flooding every few years here. A flood is usually a very bad thing, especially when it's as bad as this has been. There are corn and soybean fields near the river that are usually devastated. But I haven't revealed a good result of the floods, until now.

Months after the flooding we are left with huge areas of wetlands right in the middle of the cornfields. What looks like lakes, ponds, rivers, and just general wet areas are distributed all through these places. These wetlands, as you have guessed, bring lots of wildlife.
  

I see all of this from the dangerous highway that borders these places, so I can't usually stop and get pictures. This time I had to take the risk of getting killed by a speeding vehicle to get a few pictures. I won't soon do it again just for normal safety reasons. But let's move on with this story.

I've seen many kinds of wildlife in these wetlands over the years. Deer like to go here to get water. You have to be careful when they're crossing the road. There have been small flocks of geese relaxing in this water at times. This hasn't been unusual enough for me to take the chance to stop though.

Then I also see egrets in a few places here and there. There are usually only a few at a time, but the first time I saw them I was tempted to stop. The first time I slowed down though, they decided to all fly away. I think I even shared a few pictures of them once before.

But then this time I saw what looked like flocks of hundreds of these egrets scattered around. I had to go back home and get my camera. I had to take a chance this time. This many birds was unusual. So I came back, and after having to wait for quite some time for traffic to lighten up, I stopped and took lots of pictures.

When I got home later I loaded up the pictures of the egrets onto the computer to see if any of them came out okay, because I had to set the camera to maximum zoom while I took the pictures. As you can see, the colors were a little off, but they were good! But there was one problem with my pictures of the egrets.

When I finally got to see these birds up close, they were not egrets at all. They were pelicans! I've never seen this many pelicans before in my life. And would you expect to see huge flocks of pelicans in an Iowa cornfield?

I took the pictures a few days ago. The pelicans are still hanging around a bit. Yesterday I saw the unmistakable shape of a pelican flying above my truck. I don't know what anyone else around here thinks of them, but pelicans area welcome sight to me. I'll talk to you later.