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Pelicans

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Hello Gardeners, I’m Amanda McNulty with Clemson Extension and Making It Grow.  Dixon Lanier Merritt, American humorist wrote: A funny old bird is a pelican. His beak can hold more than his belican. Food for a week He can hold in his beak, But I don’t know the helican.

You’d think that the awkward bill of this bird and brownish feathers would have spared him from plumage hunters. But in mating season, pelicans develop beautiful reddish-brown feathers, which made them a target of poachers, especially at their Florida breeding grounds.  Theodore Roosevelt spent much of his youth with unfettered access to the American Museum of Natural History; his father was a major donor. He said reading On the Origin of the Species changed his way of viewing the world and eventually this, coupled with a posting in Tampa, led to his establishing of the first national wildlife refuge in America, Pelican Island.

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Amanda McNulty is a Clemson University Extension Horticulture agent and the host of South Carolina ETV’s Making It Grow! gardening program. She studied horticulture at Clemson University as a non-traditional student. “I’m so fortunate that my early attempts at getting a degree got side tracked as I’m a lot better at getting dirty in the garden than practicing diplomacy!” McNulty also studied at South Carolina State University and earned a graduate degree in teaching there.