Pelican Antics in Mykonos
There’s a Pelican after my dinner, he’s just been evicted for stealing but now he’s back. Whilst shelters on Mykonos from the ‘Meltemi’ wind ‘I acquire an unwelcome friend. Standing in the bowels of a ship waiting for the creeks, groans and rumble to end, a cavernous door drops like a drawbridge. Signalling my arrival in Mykonos. Sea spray flies across the harbour wall in brilliant sunshine, as we wait for our ship to be tethered.
The “Meltemi” trade wind has been blowing for days disrupting ferry schedules and fraying nerves. The ferries are the lifeblood of the islands yet this “Meltemi” wind can disrupt everyone’s best-laid plans.
Dodging the scrum I make my way along the harbour edge into the old town. On the west side of Mykonos town is the little Venice district. From its little square overlooking the sea you can see Mykonos’s famous windmills and watch the sun go down.
Sometimes a nations idisycrnicues are so singular that you associate them with that country, as soup and bread roll is a starter in Britain, Ouzo & olives are a meza in Greece.
After ordering my fish and whilst taking in the scene, Petros the pelican arrives with a posse of camera toting girls, seeking refuge in the restaurants kitchen he heads strait for my grilled fish; down on one snap, with a mad chef banging his pots and pans to flush this bird out. Petros (No fool) scoots between the restaurants tables into the next open door and another restaurants kitchen. The mother gently backs Petros out with her open apron ‘it being bigger than him’.
Mykonos, synonymous with seasonal winds and windmills has been the home of a family of pelicans since 1958. Found on a remote island near Delos by fisherman (Notorious superstitious due to Delos’s mythological status) they brought the young pelican back to Mykonos where the local inhabitants took cared of it. Mykonos is on the great white Pelican’s migration route from the Danube delta in the Black Sea to the Nile delta in Egypt.
Petros is back and all is forgiven it seems. Superstar of the bird world he might be. But watching him calculating the odds of his next escapade is quite disconcerting. Birdbrain so alien to my own it’s a wonder we share the same planet. Yet being honked at by a bird that has a knack of looking right through you to his food is very disconcerting. That cross eyed look moments before he pounces is a warning of things to come. This time I’m armed…
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Tags: meltemi, mykonos, pelican
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