Beautiful Aerial GoPro Footage Captured by Rescued Pelican Learning to Fly

Watch out aerial videographers, you may soon be replaced by birds with cameras. A few weeks ago we shared some great footage captured by a bird who got his beak on one of the BBC’s egg cameras and took flight over a group of penguins. And today, we show you what a pelican can capture when his human helps him ‘hold’ the camera.

The video above was captured by a pelican who, about four months ago, found his way to the Greystoke Mahale resort in Tanzania. The staff there took the pelican (then approximately 3 months old) in, named him Big Bird, and set about rehabilitating him so that he might take flight again and hopefully some day rejoin the flock he was separated from during a storm.

Here’s how the Greystoke Mahale staff describes the experience on their Nomad Tanzania blog:

He didn’t fly for some weeks but with encouragement he got the idea. We aren’t sure how much flying he may have already done before arriving here but he was pretty shaky in his next attempts on the beach. We would run up and down flapping our arms and simulating flight for him. He would look on curiously until one day he showed us how it was done! It was short and uncontrolled and we would look away when he was landing as he seemed to not distinguish between ground and air speed coming in way too fast and endangering our beach furniture.

Check out the video at the top to see Big Bird take flight again for the very first time, GoPro strapped securely to his beak, and head over to the Nomad Tanzania blog to read the full story.

(via GoPro)