Observations--about me and the wildlife

It is amazing how sitting cooped up in a boat for only a short time can make one "half empty".  In saying that Muertos had "nothing much to recommend it", I completely overlooked the evening show on he day we pulled in.  We got to watch a half-dozen small manta rays (maybe 18-24 inches across) cavorting in the cove.  They would repeatedly come well out of the water (maybe 4 feet clear of the surface). While "flying", they continue to flap those great sea wings--though without feathers, they don't do much.  Then they do a colossal belly-flop, and get up speed to go again.  I'd read about this behavior, and seen an individual ray jump once a way off, but never seen a show like this. 

On the subject of wildlife, I'd commented on bird behavior in La Paz (elsewhere in an e-mail):
"Add another previously respectable and admired bird to the list.

Background:  The cormorants here are not shy like at Klamath.  They will give you stink-eye if you walk by within 5 feet or so, but otherwise don't stop fishing on account of humans.  So, I've been able to watch.  Yesterday,  I saw a cormorant come up with a fish of the wide flat variety(likely a Seargent-Major http://www.4loge.net/Phuket%20vacation/Underwater/Seargent%20Major.jpg )--maybe 6" long, but too broad for a cormorant to swallow.  That hooked beak had the fish well secured, but every time the cormorant tried to adjust it to get it "down the hatch", the fish would wiggle away.  Three times the cormorant went under after it, and came up with apparently the same fish.  Eventually it just abandoned the fish, which was injured and picked up by gulls in due course.

Cut to breakfast this morning.  Same story (for all I know, same cormorant-slow learner).  After a couple of unsuccessful tries to swallow its fish, a brown pelican dive-bombed the cormorant!.  Landed right on his back.  The cormorant dove, and after 15 or 20 seconds, came up 75 feet away, with fish.  The pelican came off the water, and with 4 wing-beats, bombed the cormorant again.  This time, although it dove, it must have lost the fish.  The pelican put it's head under, came up and swallowed something wiggly. 

Never mind that the cormorant probably needs to learn what it can swallow.  That was rude--and very (bald) eagle-like.  Brown pelicans are very nearly perfect fishermen, and hardly need to steal. 

I do have to note that my sympathies are a bit subjective and limited.  I've not lost any sleep over how the fish felt about this whole thing." 

 I am now happy to report that it is apparently only the "town birds" that behave this way.  I've observed them hanging out with gulls, even begging for scraps from fishermen with the gulls.  Hanging with a bad crowd.  They probably smoke too much and stay out till the bars close, and lack the energy to fish.  At Balandra, just a few miles out of La Paz, we observed proper pelican behavior, circling along the face of a cliff, then hitting the water like a brick, and coming up with a fish.  I did not see one miss.  All's right with the world.