We are gone from the Chesapeake Bay, and as a result we see no more brown pelicans or heron. We remember being awed in the Fall spotting them this far north as we thought they were only indigenous to the tropical states.

The Brown Pelican was nearly extinct and was placed on the Endangered Species List in 1978. The species rebounded within a few years and they are everywhere. Way cool, the pelican can fly like you read about. Masters of efficient aerodynamics they have been called. They use a staggered follow-the-lead formation, like geese, that takes advantage of the air currents created by the bird in front. They make several flaps and then a long glide almost touching the water surface. By flying low over the water, they compress the air beneath their large bodies, creating an air pillow that sustains theire gravity-defying glides.

A pelican's beak can hold more than his belly, i.e. a staggering three GALLONS of water! It can't swallow that much, though. Instead it sieves its catch from the water before tipping back its head and swallowing.

A pelican's eyesight is so sharp that they can spot food from very high and then dive-bomb their prey. Sadly that dive-bombing does a job on their eyes and they eventually go blind and then starve to death because they cannot feed. I don't like that part.

We see tons and tons of osprey here in the Bay and all the way along the ICW. The channel markers wear crowns of thorns, jumbles of sticks that mark their homes. October was too late for the young to be in the nests, but in the Spring the nests are full of the osprey feeding their young. As we go by they protectively glare down at us with their curved beaks.

And then there are the heron which are everywhere all along the waterway and in the creeks of the Bay. They stand stick-still in the shadows at the shoreline, flapping off with an annoyed "skronk" once they realize that they have been spotted.

As we leave this warm water, we also leave behind the krill. These small 1-inch shrimp are abundant and noisy. At night we lie in our berths and hear small crackling noises resonating throughout the hull. It's the krill. It sounds like the fiberglass is slowly crumbling apart. Others have likened it to "rice krispies popping" or "bacon frying in a skillet". The cruisers' legend says the krill is feeding off the algae on the boat bottom. Marine biologists say (to the contrary) that the sound is from "the cavitation from the water jet made by the shrimp's high-speed claw snapping" at an astonishing 62 mph." Now that's snapping! These shrimp are so noisy that they can conceal submarines from sonar! As the cruising guide says, as we are trying to go to sleep listening to this, "think of the thousands of snappers in the water around your hull, busily conducting their own coconut telegraph at a frequency of 300 KHZ, stunning prey, defending territory, and communicating with other shrimp".

We are used to them now and it doesn't bother our sleep one bit. But we are gone with the warm water and gone with the shrimp.

See Gallery for bird pix!