I'm from the UK originally. On one of my first trips to California I was up on the cliffs in Marin County and a squadron flew by and I was amazed by them - and the Californians I was with were like "yeah, you see them all the time".

Now I live in California and I still can't believe I get to see them here. They're absurd - they don't look like they should be able to fly at all. They're also incredibly pretty, especially in their breeding plumage.

I live in Half Moon Bay, just south of San Francisco, which turns out to be home to the second largest mega-roost of the California Brown Pelican (my favourite kind of pelican) in the world.

We've even rescued two of them (injured birds, we got them in a carrier and took them to the animal rescue place).

They make for a fun theme for all sorts of different AI experiments.

They're also very photogenic - I had a bunch of photos I've taken on my PyCon poster recently (you have to zoom in quite a bit to see them though): https://static.simonwillison.net/static/2025/poster-full-siz...