Pelican diving

Brown pelicans fish by plunge-diving from twenty or thirty feet up, folding into this hooked shape just before impact to protect their neck from the shock of hitting the water at speed. This one committed fully, wings swept back and bill already leading the way down.

Why it matters

Brown pelicans nearly disappeared from the East Coast in the mid-20th century due to DDT thinning their eggshells, and their recovery after the pesticide ban is one of the clearer conservation success stories along the Atlantic coast — a sight this common today was genuinely rare within living memory.

Getting the shot

A fast shutter and a lot of missed frames — pelicans commit to a dive in under a second, so getting the exact moment of the fold takes either luck or firing a long burst and picking through it afterward. This was the latter.