The pelican

Backlit and the pelican. Today I thought I would share a picture which tells a story about invasive species. This was at a pond in Singapore where Pelicans have taken to nesting, and fishing....BUT this one was not going to get an easy meal! This beast of a fish is a Pleco, it's an aquarium fish from South America. But when they get too big, people simply think "oh, I don't want to kill it, I will release it in a nearby pond"...which is a huge mistake.

I watched for over 20 minutes as again and again this big bird threw his head back to attempt to swallow this fish, but everytime the fish threw out his large spines (you can see it caught on the front edge of the beak), and foiled the increasingly frustrated bird. I moved around this struggle to get the sun behind the birds pouch/maw to highlight the veins of this incredible fishing net. Maw = the jaws or throat of a voracious animal, or the mouth or gullet of a greedy person. How appropriate. Ps I had to leave before the end of this struggle, so you can make your own ending.....

but basically this fish now has no natural predator in the wild, and so they will continue to breed and devour all local wildlife in this pond.

And here are a couple more gratuitous pelican shots....