Pelican Dreams

I live near the coast and see pelican almost every day but I didn't really know much about them until I saw "Pelican Dreams."

"Pelican Dreams" is not a BBC style documentary. The filmmaker does not have the high tech cameras or big budget. Instead, it focuses on several rescue and release facilities and what the pelicans go through. I came away with a lot of admiration for the people who rescue these beautiful animals.

There are also sections of the film that cover their natural history and shows their breeding areas.

If you love birds and wildlife, I am pretty sure you will enjoy watching "Pelican Dreams."

We saw this film a couple of weeks ago thanks to the San Jose Camera Cinema Club. The filmmaker, Judy Irving ("The Wild Parrots of Telegraph Hill") was in attendance. After the film screened, Irving said she'd long wanted to make a documentary about California Brown Pelicans because they'd fascinated her as a child and continued to do so into adulthood. What she did not have was a hook. She was diverted by the wild parrots that live around San Francisco's Telegraph Hill and made a very successful film about them. So now she was an avian documentary filmmaker.

Then an exhausted, dehydrated pelican to be named Gigi landed on San Francisco's Golden Gate (GG, get it?) bridge and the hook was set. "Pelican Dreams" revolves around Gigi's rehabilitation in the hands of some very caring people. It has many interludes to tell the rich story of the California Brown Pelican. For example, they almost went extinct because their nesting area on Santa Barbara Island off the California coast was poisoned by DDT runoff from a Los Angeles industrial firm. The DDT weakened the eggshells and of 1000 eggs one year, 999 were crushed under the weight of the parent. One entire year's crop of fledglings vanished.

Things have gotten much better for the pelicans since then. Brown pelicans from Baja California in Mexico have migrated north and repopulated the flocks in the Western US. However, wherever bird and man meet, it's often bad for bird. "Pelican Dreams" takes you through a lot of this in detail.

The movie is fascinating. If it has one fault, it's long for the subject matter, which reflects the filmmaker's fascination with the subject. However, the cinematography includes shots of pelicans' first flights and high-speed film clips of pelicans diving into the ocean to catch fish in their pouches. You likely won't see such wonders in another movie.

This documentary closes with a pelican joke which I'll open my review with. A pelican walks into a bar and the bartender says "So, why the long face?"

Enough of the levity, as this film opens with actual footage of a pelican, which seemingly cannot fly, causing traffic havoc on the Golden Gate Bridge, in San Francisco. She's "captured' and placed in a police car and eventually brought to a bird rehabilitation center, where they'll see if they can nurse this pelican, named Gigi by the filmmaker, back to health for eventual release back into her natural habitat.

Thus part of the movie will focus of Gigi's recovery, but there are numerous other elements to the film. Focusing mainly on the California brown pelican, they'll be many pelican factoids presented to the viewer. We'll visit their breeding grounds, on the Channel Islands, (off the southern California coast), and see how difficult it is for pelican chicks to survive early on (50% don't make it), and how the last born into the nest face the longest odds.

They'll also be information presented on how to tell the age of a pelican by it's coloring, we'll see some of their mating rituals, and how they learn to fly and eventually catch fish for their survival. It was interesting to see how the California brown pelican was almost brought to extinction by the use of chemical pesticides being dumped into the water, in the 1960's and 70's, but how now that DDT and other chemicals have been banned the birds are making a recovery. There's also very brief clips of the horrific damage done to pelicans due to the 2010 Chevron Gulf oil spill.

All in all, I thought this documentary, directed and narrated by Judy Irving (The Wild Parrots of Telegraph Hill) was an informative and interesting movie about pelicans, who have been on this Earth for some 30 million years and are an important part of our environment.