I went out to the Flight Deck at Bosque Del Apache National Wildlife Refuge, just at sunset, to catch the geese and cranes coming in. Though it was already crowed (as it was every night during the Festival of the Cranes), I found a likely place to park beyond the platform where there is a break in the trees that shows an expanse of the pond.

I had only been there long enough to get out of the car when I looked up and saw a skein of white birds with black wing-tips coming from the north. “Ah,” I thought, “just in time.”

I think I was on my second burst of shots before it hit me. They were not geese. When compared to Snow Geese, American White Pelicans have a superficially similar pattern of white and black…white body…black in the wings, and when the flocks are flying high you have to look twice. The shape is all wrong of course, with that heavy bill pushed out in front. But still, add the fact that the Geese are expected at the flight deck at sunset, and the Pelicans are not…and you can understand my mis-identification.

It was a flock (not a skein after all…as a “skein” is literally “ducks or geese in flight”) of about 50-75 birds. After a long slow glide in, they settled on the pond and began to feed.

The woman next to me said, “What are those? Those aren’t geese!” No, just Pelicans borrowing some of the Snow Geese Sunset at the Flight Deck. Pelican Sunset.

Canon SX50HS. Flight shots in Sports Mode. The others in Program. Processed in Lightroom for intensity, clarity, and sharpness.

And for the Sunday thought: I wonder how often we see what expect to see when it comes to matters of the spirit? Are we conditioned by the place and the time and our expectations to see what we came to see? Do we miss the spiritual Pelicans in the sunset because we are looking for Snow Geese? I think of Abraham climbing the mountain with his son for sacrifice and his faith trailing behind him the dust…only to have God change the rules, pull the faith forward, and provide his own sacrifice. I think of the Pharisees confident expectations of a messiah to free them from Rome, and how again, God changed the rules and sent them a savior sacrifice to save them from themselves…to save us from ourselves. I wonder, sometimes, how conditioned I am to see God through that story, and if I am mis-identifying the spiritual when I see it…then I remember that God is able to change the rules…is bigger than the story we tell about him and delights to prove it. I might think Snow Goose, but God will be faithful to reveal himself in the Pelicans if that is what is there!

It is, after all, the Pelicans that make a Pelican Sunset.