Every morning, towards the end of night-shift, I would see a different sky from the window of the hospital I worked at. One year, a small duck that had lived near the pier, found a mate. I would sometimes notice a group of dolphins cut through the water and move amongst the yachts, feeding quietly. As though they recognised certain birds and animals that fed in the area, I remember seeing the largest dolphin sometimes diving beneath the surface for a few minutes and coming up underneath a large pelican, almost playfully, disturbing the resting bird, causing it to ruffle it's feathers indignantly. Another dolphin would follow one of the Sunday morning walkers along the course of the jetty while she walked her Alsation. The large dog would would stop occasionally and the dolphin seemed to slow down and make a few seconds contact...a "dog-dolphin connection".
The newly paired ducks were seen paddling amongst the boats with about sixteen tiny, ducklings behind them and every morning I would look for them. As they started growing, the ducks let the ducklings swim around the pier in a little group without supervision and the dolphins would dive gently around them. When they ventured too far one day, three pelicans round them up into a "V" and guide them back to their mother.
The group began to look a little smaller so every day so I began doing a daily duckling-count. Day by day they were disappearing and, at first, I suspected that the dolphins may have been eating them for breakfast...this wasn't the case. In fact, one Friday morning I saw a small pod of dolphins surrounding the small group of ducklings in a circle and they seemed to be rising out of the water. After a short wait, disbelievingly, I saw a scrappy group of seagulls attacking the ducklings from the air. As they tried to dive into the ducklings, the dark, majestic dolphins reared up, preventing them from harming the babies in the water. Since that day, I have always thought of the dolphins as the unspoken guardians of all sea ducklings.
