Here, Pelican is an Author and Historian

A brown pelican in profile on a bare ground, the panel left white around it. Freda builds the bird twice over: the bill and skull are modelled tonally in grey and warm ochre, while the wing and back become a mosaic of separate lozenges, each one outlined in black and filled with cream, slate or gold, laid in overlapping courses like roof tiles. Where the two methods meet at the shoulder the change is abrupt and she does not soften it. A spray of fine graphite lines lifts from the back of the head — the nib the title names. Below, the water is reduced to flat pale pebbles, so the bird floats on pattern rather than on depth.