An amber sheen has stained the pelican's white head and brown chest and wings. But the oil isn't thick enough to keep it from flying away if Seymour approaches.

"The only way to catch a bird in that condition is to chase it repeatedly until it gets tired," says Seymour, an ornithologist with the Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries.

"We're just going to be putting him under more stress than we need to."

Oiled birds aren't hard to find some 54 days after an explosion on the BP-leased Deepwater Horizon drilling rig sparked the worst environmental catastrophe in US history.

The problem is finding a bird that can be rescued without doing more harm than good, Seymour says.

He's seen eggs crushed by well-meaning amateurs who trampled through a pelican colony to capture a single oiled bird.

Even stepping onto a rocky shore can send hundreds of panicked nesting birds into the skies, exposing their fledglings and eggs to the sweltering sun.

Taking an oiled chick away from its parents means it may never learn the skills it needs to survive on its own.

And capturing a lightly oiled bird still able to fly and feed itself could mean leaving its chicks or eggs untended.

"It's a tough decision to make, but sometimes we have to make hard decisions for the greater good of the birds," Seymour says as he directs the boat captain to move on to another island and leave the oiled pelican behind.

Sometimes they can't help but take a risk, like with a baby pelican that had fallen out of its nest into a puddle of oil. But, too often, Seymour has to simply watch the birds preen and hope that they can clean themselves.

Further complicating the rescue efforts is the very topography which makes Louisiana's coastal wetlands such prime nesting grounds.

It can take 30 minutes to walk ten feet through the tangled, sunken mangrove roots where there's plenty of places for the frightened birds to hide. There's nothing to stand on at all in many of the bayous. And the shifting tides can push the oil deep into the marshes.

Most of Louisiana's oiled birds are captured only if their feathers are so sticky they can't fly and if they can be plucked off the water or a solid shore.

The work will be easier for rescue crews working along the rock or sandy beaches of Mississippi, Alabama and Florida. But with the slick spreading across such a vast region, most badly oiled birds will likely die before they can be rescued, if they're found at all.

Some 530 oiled birds have been captured in time to be treated and hopefully released back into the wild. Another 725 bird carcasses have collected for evidence.

Oil is still gushing out of the ruptured well some 52 miles offshore and far below the surface.

"It sure would be nice to have that well capped," Seymour tells AFP Sunday. "We don't know when this is going to end and we know the oil is going to keep coming in waves."

The biggest concern in Louisiana is the threat to species which were already on the brink, like the brown pelicans and reddish egrets, Seymour says.

The brown pelican -- Louisiana's state bird -- was nearly wiped in the 1970's due to contamination from the pesticide DDT.

Careful management, and a ban on DDT, allowed the pelicans to thrive to the point where they were taken off the endangered species last November.

Now, it faces the double threat of oil and chemical dispersants in the water and contamination from the fish that are swimming in it.

There are only about 100 reddish egrets breeding pairs left in the state, Seymour says. And a thick ribbon of oil has slipped past the protective boom to coat an island near Grand Isle where a dozen of those pairs are nesting.

"You can't afford to lose any of those birds," he tells AFP.

earlier related report
US orders BP to set up fund for oil spill claims
Washington (AFP) June 13, 2010 - US officials demanded Sunday that BP set up a special fund to pay oil spill claims and said President Barack Obama will give a rare White House address next week, in a sign of the seriousness of the disaster both for the country and his presidency.

As Obama prepared to tour stricken states on his fourth visit to the Gulf of Mexico since the disaster, top aides ordered BP to set up an escrow account to pay legitimate claims and let an independent panel oversee the process.

The announcement of a prime-time televised address at 8:00 pm on Tuesday (0000 GMT Wednesday) marked a significant elevation in the Obama administration's strategy on the oil crisis.

"The president is going down to the Gulf on Monday and Tuesday to the states he hasn't visited -- Alabama, Mississippi and Florida. When he returns he will address the nation from the White House," top aide David Axelrod said.

"We're at a kind of inflection point in this saga. He wants to lay out the steps we'll take from here to get through this crisis," Axelrod, Obama's senior adviser, told NBC television's "Meet The Press" program.

It is comparatively rare for presidents to use the formal setting of a prime-time televised address from the White House. Such addresses are often reserved for moments of national crises, including wars and disasters.

Obama has yet to give an Oval Office address to the American people, though it has not been decided yet whether he will appear at the presidential desk flanked by US flags in that setting on Tuesday evening.

Obama's address and the more stringent demands of BP suggest a concerted effort to be more aggressive on the disaster as angry Americans are confronted by disturbing images of oiled birds and toxic crude spoiling fragile wetlands.

BP has failed several times to seal the flow and a first relief well that could provide a permanent solution is not predicted to be ready until the second week of August at the earliest.

A containment system is siphoning up some 15,000 barrels, 630,000 gallons, of oil a day to the surface via a mile-long pipe but estimates indicate the same amount of crude is probably still leaking into the Gulf.

The US Coast Guard ordered BP to fine-tune plans to increase the capacity of its "top hat" oil capture system amid fears of a time lapse while oil processing vessels are rotated.

Businesses in the Gulf region, ranging from fishing to tourism, are suffering. Some workers are finding temporary employment with BP to help in the clean-up effort, but longer-term prospects for many are bleak.

Obama is to insist at a high-stakes White House meeting Wednesday with BP bosses that the firm establish an independently administered fund to pay out claims related to what is now the nation's worst ever environmental disaster.

"We want to set up a structure and protect the integrity of that fund so people get what they are due," Axelrod said. "And we want to make sure that money is independently managed so that they won't be slow-walked on these claims."

Thad Allen, the former coast guard chief leading the US response to the crisis, said he expected under-fire BP CEO Tony Hayward to join chairman Carl-Henric Svanberg at the meeting with Obama and administration officials.

BP is expected to suspend its next dividend payment to shareholders, due on July 27, in a bid to quell growing anger in the US, where many accuse it of deliberately underestimating the flow rate to try to reduce its liability, which is worked out by the barrel.

US officials have suggested BP should also have to reimburse all companies and individuals that have lost business or income due to the six-month moratorium on deep sea drilling imposed by Obama last month.

Analysts estimate that including the cleanup, compensation claims, government penalties, and a host of civil lawsuits, BP's total bill from the catastrophe could reach 100 billion dollars.

The firm's share price has fallen more than 40 percent since the BP-leased Deepwater Horizon exploded on April 20, killing 11 workers. The rig sank two days later, fracturing the pipe now spewing the oil.

In the past 55 days, oil has reached 68.2 miles (110 kilometers) of shoreline along the Gulf Coast, including parts of Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and Florida. About one-third of the Gulf's fishing waters remain off-limits due to health concerns.

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