Jeffrey Gordon is a camp manager at the Nomad Lodges in Tanzania, a place with an enormous diversity of animals. His job duties include interacting with a wide variety of animals, including elephants, zebras, hippos and gazelles, along with many others.
Despite interacting with so many animals, Jeffrey developed a special friendship with the particular pelican. After the pelican was separated from his flock at just three months old in the middle of a storm, he ended up alone on a beach outside Greystoke Mahale. Jeffrey found the bird and decided to take care of him and the two had been inseparable ever since!
Even though the pelican was orphaned, Jeffrey managed to teach him how to fish himself.
"When he was about a year old, I started teaching him to fish because he didn’t have his colony to show him how. I had to go out fishing for him anyway, and I thought that if I brought him with me I might awaken some of his natural fishing instincts, and he might start doing it on his own." Jeffrey told the Financial Times.
"The whole time we were out he would drag his beak in the water and duck his head under the surface to search for fish. When I caught something, he was keen to get it in his mouth as quickly as possible. Often I caught fish that were much too big for him but he would try and take them from me anyway. He could manage to eat a 12in fish but some of mine were double that size — sometimes I had to wrestle them from him to prevent him from choking." he continues.
The man gave the nickname Big Bird to the gorgeous pelican and he also taught him to how to fly. Jeffrey, his wife Kerry and Big Bird had been going on adventures on the couple's kayak in the evenings. After about four weeks, Big Bird managed to fish himself.
"I was really happy for him. Even if he didn’t succeed often, it was great to see him trying." said Jeffrey.
Their adventures have been recorded on Jeffrey's camera and the footage moves us all.
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