Wikipedia:Featured picture candidates/Image:Strange pelican behaviour.jpg

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Strange Pelican Behaviour[edit]

An Australian Pelican apparently turning his beak inside out, Lakes Entrance, Victoria

I'm nominating this shot mainly on the grounds of the rarity of the image. And I do mean rare. This shot wasn't taken by me but my Dad and he was taking a landscape style shot of Lakes Entrance - not even aware of the pelican! Luckily I noticed this bizarre behaviour when I was looking through the shots. However, because it's a 1:1 crop off a wide angle landscape shot, please be a little lenient on the quality.

Appears in: Pelican and Australian Pelican


  • Support Self Nom. --Fir0002 02:51, 19 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]
    • Btw if the red pole in the lower centre is distracting people I can easily clone it out...--Fir0002 02:55, 19 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose Main subject too small in frame, no explanation for behaviour (where's the proposed casption?), how do we know this is "strange" - I would guess every yawning pelican would look like this... "apparently turning his beak inside out" doesn't really explain anything. --Janke | Talk 08:10, 19 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]
    • Proposed caption for what? In case you too are under the impression that a POTD caption is a prerequisite for a FP please read my comments here. But I guess what you are saying is fair enough about the size of the main subject, but that's the thing about rare scenes - there is no way to plan/expect them. I highly doubt that this inverted beak is typical - I'm not saying I've made a study of pelicans but I certainly have seen nothing like it even on Attenborough. --Fir0002 08:40, 19 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]
      • Proposed caption for why the beak is inside out... If something is extraordinary about a photo, I want to know why. "Apparently turning inside out" isn't enough for me. This is WP, not Commons. (Explanation now in link by Mbz below.) --Janke | Talk 14:11, 19 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose It's certainly an interesting snap, but I'm not even sure, if you don't know why it's inverting its beak, that there's any enc value here at all. Was it really windy, d'you s'pose? ;o)) If you can find out and add the info to an article, fair enough, but an image like this is crying out for an explanatory caption. That said, I really don't see anything here crying out to be FP at all. --mikaultalk 10:52, 19 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment I found out why the pelican has done this thing. Please read here. They call it a pelican yoga.--Mbz1 (talk) 13:25, 19 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]
    • Thanks for that link. So, it's not that rare after all... My objections because of small subject still stands. --Janke | Talk 14:10, 19 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I'd say it is rather rare. I observe pelicans a lot and I've never seen one doing something like this.--Mbz1 (talk) 14:24, 19 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks a lot for the link Mbz - how did you come across it? A google search? --Fir0002 01:49, 20 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]
You're welcome. Yes, I did a google search.--Mbz1 (talk) 03:11, 20 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support I like rare shots very much even, if the quality is not perfect.This image made me want to know more about the subject and IMO it is the most important quality of FP images.--Mbz1 (talk) 13:25, 19 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose, get closer. --Aqwis (talk) 14:04, 19 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose Aye, my (main) issue is the crop. It has me wanting to submit an edit, but I don't think a proper crop has a chance of holding sharpness on it. But you have to figure that in an encyclopedic shot pointing out the bill that that should make up most of the photograph, just my view. Interesting subject though. Ryo 14:45, 19 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose Very curious behaviour and an intriguing subject, yet it looks rather snapshotty and lacks colour. The composition is probably substandard, and that pole thing in the centre is awfully distracting. -- Chris.B | talk 15:00, 19 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose but only due to size of the image. If this can be cropped while keeping decent resolution I would probably support.D-rew (talk) 15:10, 19 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]
As I stated in the original nom, this is a 1:1 crop - a high res version is not possible w/o interpolating --Fir0002 01:49, 20 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose You should've used your 70-200mm for this shot. --antilivedT | C | G 10:02, 20 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]
    • Honestly! I may as well forego putting anything other than the picture! Please read my initial comments before complaining about size/quality! --Fir0002 11:33, 20 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]
      • Burden isn't on us, its on you as the nom, don't be offended. IMO for nature shots FP = top quality + rarity, you've got one of those, but the other just isn't there (again in my opinion).D-rew (talk) 06:12, 21 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]
        • Yes I appreciate that and your stance is perfectly reasonable (with regard to not enough resolution of main subject) but comments such as "If this can be cropped while keeping decent resolution" are not particularly useful given the fact I've already said that this is the best possible resolution I can offer. --Fir0002 07:26, 21 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose. Gee Fir, why didn't you zoom in more on this? ;-) Fair dinkum, all these complaints about images not having captions, etc; do most voters even bother to read any preceding votes or anything the nominator writes in their nom??? It sure doesn't seem like it in most cases. It is very interesting, and now that Mbz1 has added some info on what this behaviour is, it now has increased encyclopaedic value that was missing initially. However the bird is unfortunately too small a part of the image for mine, leading to insufficient detail on the behaviour depicted, and sadly nothing can be done about this. The colours also seem a bit off. Could I suggest that once you're no longer worried about the size requirements for FPC that you do crop in on the bird down to about 500px, as that will make the image far more interesting in its article context (as is, looking at the thumb you really only see it as a pelican on a post). --jjron (talk) 08:16, 21 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose. Since we can't do any better on the resolution, I'd say go out and camp and wait for another shot. ;) Apparently it's not all that terribly rare (thanks for the info, Mbz1), so the 'rarity' shouldn't be used to outweigh the limited resolution. If you manage to snap a shot at high res, bring it back! :) --Dante Alighieri | Talk 20:14, 25 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Not promoted MER-C 02:51, 26 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]

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