‘A few’ or ‘few’

A reader's question: I’m a little confused as to when to use “a few” and “few”. For example, we can write “We saw a few pelicans on the beach” or “We saw few pelicans on the beach”. Could you please explain the usage?

Answer: When you write “We saw a few pelicans on the beach.” it means you saw a small number of pelicans there. But when you write “We saw few pelicans on the beach.”, it means you expected to see more pelicans, but you only saw “few”, which in your sentence means “not enough” or “not many”.

The above question and answer appear, among others, in a column promoting the correct use of English of a popular national English daily.

Not convinced over the explanations given for the seond sentence, I have sent my following comments to the editor without receiving any response:-

What is explained above is in line with the definitions of 'few' in any dictionary.

However, many including myself understand the second sentence with the definitions of 'few' in thesaurus (http://thesaurus.reference.com/browse/few) which are (as an adjective) hardly any and (as a pronoun) scarcely any.