Pelican Portrait

by Mike Lee

Title

Pelican Portrait

Artist

Mike Lee

Medium

Photograph - Digital Photography

Description

Pine Creek in Lassen County California is the only significant tributary to Eagle Lake, a very large endorheic basin and the second largest natural lake in the state of California. The creek only runs seasonally and in the worst drought years it can run very briefly, if at all. Fortunately the 2022-2023 winter was quite wet and the creek flowed for longer than it had is several years, leading to some much needed refilling of Eagle Lake which had receded a great deal. The running of the creek coincides with the Eagle Lake rainbow trouts’ urges to spawn. Near the community of Spalding there is a weir built across the creek which historically facilitated trapping of spawning fish for the hatchery program (the Eagle Lake strain of rainbow trout is very hardy and widely used for planted trout around the west). In recent years the traps haven’t been used and electro-shock techniques in the lake itself have been used to capture brood stock due to the unreliable creek flows. That doesn’t stop many fish from trying to run the creek anyway and the white pelicans, many which are in breeding mode themselves, from taking up positions in the creek in the hopes of a nice trout meal. I captured this one wading the shallows in early morning light of a mid-May morning.

Uploaded

May 24th, 2023

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