...but he IS the closest I had ever been to one in my life! Despite 6 trips to the West Coast through the early part of the decade, the California brown pelicans would NEVER allow humans this close! I was thrilled with this, never realizing that by week's end, I would actually be standing in the midst of over a hundred brown pelicans in a veritable feeding frenzy where I would actually be whacked in the leg by their frantic wings several times over! But that's another story in another gallery.