Morning Pelican Flight

A few months ago, I lamented that I had no Pelican bird images.  During my few days in South Carolina earlier this year, my host for the week made sure I had plenty of Pelican shots to take home.  Host of the Year stuff, that is.
As I read about Pelicans, there are only a few species in North America.  There is the Brown Pelican, which I saw plenty of in South Carolina, seen here.  There is the 9th MAS Pelican, which is more of a fraternity based in Delaware, but known to travel worldwide.

And there is the Great White Pelican, with a habitat area that includes Michigan.  And this a bird sighted in the Refuge.
I didn't see any of these birds at the Refuge last year.  I had seen them listed on the published bird sighted list, so I knew they were around.  And this year I can say they are plentiful.  
In the Refuge, the Pelicans don't have any photography friendly places close to a point I can use to take pictures that I've found yet.  I have some far off group photos, but nothing great.
Until today.  I went to the Refuge in time to see the sunrise.  I expected nothing great photo-wise, but wanted to see the sights.  It was beautiful.  I was trying to get to a specific point where the sun would be to my back, but didn't get there in time.  I saw this young juvenile Eagle in a small dead tree right next to the road.  Seriously, the tree was less than ten feet from the road, the the Eagle was about 10 feet up.  That's close.  As the truck crept by, the Eagle didn't move.  I passed the tree and went up the road about 20 feet, and then got out very, very slowly.  I have some good pictures of the Eagle.  Not quite in morning light, but close.
Back to the Pelicans.
As I was getting ready to move back to the truck, this flying Pelican formation came at me.  Usually this short notice opportunity is a recipe for disaster on my part in that because I shoot mostly in manual mode, something will go wrong.  But it didn't, I didn't miss this shot.
Originally, after doing some post processing, I thought I had messed up the pelican's wings.  Because it was mostly dark and I was shooting at a higher ISO, I thought I had flat black pixels under the bird's wings.  All the wings.  I thought, there was my disaster.
Turns out the Pelicans do have a black color component on the wings and this is normal.  I learned something today.
This is my lucky shot of the morning flight of a group of Great White Pelicans.

Morning Pelican Flight

NIKON D500 Ver.1.15/70.0-300.0 mm f/4.5-5.6

450 mm, 1/1000 sec, f/6.3, ISO 1000 (AUTO)

EV +1, MANUAL Mode, Size DX

For me there's a log going on here past the Pelicans.  The mist off the water is pretty cool and the sunlight on the birds is fairly interesting.  I thought about cropping it closer, but I didn't want to lose too much of the greens, mist or sky.
Note:  I did warm up the image a bit, the camera had it on the cool side.  Cheating, I think not.