08/21/2026
Look at that face 🖤
There’s nothing else in Miami’s sky quite like a Brown Pelican: that unmistakable silhouette when you spot one flying overhead, almost never alone (they’re rarely seen solo, usually moving in a loose little squad), and that wild, near-vertical plunge straight into the water the second they spot a fish.
Brown Pelicans almost disappeared from Florida skies. In the mid-1900s, the pesticide DDT worked its way up the food chain and caused their eggshells to grow dangerously thin, most nests failed before ever hatching, and populations crashed.
Everything changed when DDT was banned in 1972. Florida’s pelicans recovered fast enough to be removed from the endangered species list by 1985, years before the species was declared fully recovered nationwide in 2009.
They’re not thriving the way they once did, but the difference is night and day. These days, you’ll spot them fishing off nearly every dock, pier, and seawall around Miami, folding those wings and dropping straight into the water like they’ve done it a thousand times (they have).
A quiet comeback story, right in our backyard. We’ll never get tired of seeing them out there🖤
Thank you for the amazing photo CiscoFilms 🥹🤍
