Fish Wings Part One: The Pelicans' Tale

We are the Fish Wings tribe.

We go where the fish are.On this day, they are at Vilano Beach at the mouth of the St. Augustine Inlet.
We go even when the fish hide among pounding surf and sharp rocks.
...because we must.
Our fish wings get us there.

Our powerful fish wings get us over obstacles so we can ...fish.

Our fish wings allow us to surf the air the way the Fish Leg tribe surfs the water.
They never seem to catch fish doing that, but we do.
Sometimes the very big fish catch them ... we try and avoid that.

Our wings make vertical takeoffs possible, even in heavy seas.

And when we need air brakes, they fold up quite nicely.
When they do, you can really see our arms aren't that different from the Fish Leg tribe's arms.
A few hundred million years of Evolution tweaking us for our different roles yields different similarities.
We fly.
We catch fish.

We take fish, but we send some back as droplets of fertilizer that feeds the plankton, that feeds the fish, that feed us... and you.

The fishing is done.
Our fish wings take us back across the inlet to Anastasia State Park where the tribe can rest and digest.
We need these quiet places.

The two sides of the inlet are as different as night and day. We visit and fish on the North side, but there's no quiet place on Vilano Beach anymore, not for the Fish Wing tribe anyway.
Too many houses and too many Fish Legs, you can only rest for a few moments there.
The Skimmers can show you what we mean in part two of Fish Wings.