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Malibu Diary

Everyone wants a piece of Malibu, including me. My buying power has proven modest — an aging mobile home on a bluff above the beach. We rent the land. The house itself sits on metal tripods that shimmy with the slightest earthquake, let the occasional raccoon or possum rest in the cool darkness. Their smell comes through the air vents, a pungent musk that can’t be anything but wild animal.

Some nights, coyotes sing their moony love songs. Others, they rob you of sleep with the shrill staccato of a successful kill. The cats in the house wake up then, drift to an open window, watch and listen long into the sudden silence that means someone, somewhere, is having dinner. Those same nights you might hear a sea lion on the beach. It’s that odd, bellowed bark, fierce and kind of funny. If it’s really quiet, if the guy who just shelled out 20 million for one the monster mansions on the cove isn’t throwing a party, you hear a chorus of replies.

Wake up early enough and a membrane of mist hangs above the water. There’s been a dawn patrol of dolphins who glide by, gray fins piercing gray water backed by gray sky. Later in the day, alerted by pelicans dive-bombing schools of fish, the dolphins come back to feed. This time they’re too fast to follow — a fin, a tail, a quick rustle of breath. Get lucky and they’ll go airborne, perfect arcs, perfect dives.

I thought (with all due respect to the humans here) those dolphins were the best surfers in the cove. Then the pelicans came. Two of them. California brown pelicans, the ones driven to near–extinction in the 1970s. There are thousands of them now, rebounding thanks to a ban on the pesticide DDT. Now, when pelicans lay their clutches of three or four eggs, when the mother and father take turns sitting on the nest, there—s enough calcium in the shells that the eggs don’t break. Chicks are born. Colonies grow. They’re ancient—looking birds, like the drawings of what scientists think birds looked like in the time of dinosaurs. Long necks, long bills, big bodies that weigh up to ten pounds, wingspans that reach seven feet.

Pelicans have amazing eyesight, can spot schools of fish from up to 60 feet in the air. Sixty feet. They angle their bodies, fold those wings and plummet, slice through the water to scoop fish into the stretchy pouches beneath their bills. Hard work, even with air sacs under their skin to buffer the fall, to float them back to fresh air.

Harder still when you learn they eat northern anchovies, herring, Pacific mackerel, Pacific sardines. So do we. A fishing fleets’ boats, nets and crews versus a ten–pound bird with good eyes — fair contest?

But the surfing.

Pelicans surf. If you’ve seen them at the beach, you’ve seen them surf. Angled above the water, tilted to catch the breeze, they ride the airfoil made by a breaking wave. Biologists say it’s to save energy and that makes sense. Less energy spent on travel leaves more for hunting and mating. This summer, though, I saw pelicans surf for fun.

Do birds feel joy? I think these two did. Scoff, call me sentimental, that’s fine. It’s true. But here’s what happened: Sunset. Soon after the solstice, so a long, slow, reluctant dusk. I’m on the bluff watching a flock of ducklings scoot out from under the pier and follow mom into the kelp beds when this pelican takes off on a wave. Flaps a few times and glides, elegant, gorgeous

Wave ends, birds lands, sits in the swell. Ten seconds, 20, 30 seconds later and the bird takes off and I’m thinking ‘Goodbye, good luck, be safe, God bless you.’ But he circles and there’s another wave and he catches it. Same thing — a slow, smooth ride above the wave, a gentle flap of the wings as he pulls out, sits again in the same spot and waits. Could he feel the coming swell in his body? I think so, because he never turned his head.

By about the third wave of the set, I sat down. Happiness can do that, make you weak in the knees. A second pelican joined the first. Smaller, younger, he caught a wave and did the same thing — surfed, pulled out, sat, surfed again. God, he was graceful. And so they took turns. A dozen waves, a dozen rides. No fights, no fuss, just a pair of pelicans surfing a small point break in Malibu. Not for travel and not for food. It was for pleasure. It was for fun. I swear it.

And when the sun set, as the set ended, it was over. On the last wave (How could they know? But they did know.) first the older bird, then the younger, took off, surfed, pulled out. Rose into the sky and left. You could hear their wings flap in the silence. I sat for a while longer.