Pelicans are often seen flying in flocks in a V shape or line formation. Sometimes, depending on the wind, they fly close to the water with their long wings nearly touching the waves. At other times they can be seen circling very high in the sky.
Pelicans are large birds. The average white pelican of North America weighs from ten to seventeen pounds when it is full grown. It is from four to five feet long and has a wingspan of eight or nine feet. Brown pelicans are smaller, usually weighing about eight pounds, and having a wingspan of seven and a half feet.
These birds are found almost everywhere in warm and temperate regions. The brown and the white pelicans are the only species in the Americas. In Europe, Africa, southern Asia, and Australia there are six species. Pelicans have existed in the world for a very long time. Fossil remains date back to between thirty or forty million years ago.
All pelicans have a throat, or gular, pouch which can be extended when they are feeding. The gular pouch of the American white pelican can hold as much as three gallons. This pelican fishes from the surface of the water; the brown pelican dives into the water for its food.
The white pelicans sometimes have a community fishing arrangement. They gather in a semi-circle on the surface of shallow water and with noisy splashings drive the fish in towards shore. Then, almost in unison, they gather the fish into their voluminous pouches. Pelicans for the most part eat “trash fish,” that is, fish which are not valuable to the commercial fisherman.
In March and April the white pelicans of North America begin their long migration from the Gulf Coast to their inland breeding areas. Over mountains and deserts they fly, to islands in fresh water lakes in Utah, Wyoming, and western Canada. A few nest in coastal areas, but most of the seven major breeding areas of white pelicans in North America are in fresh water.
They nest in colonies of from a few birds to several hundred pairs, depending on the local food supply. They may lay their chalky white eggs on the ground or in mounds of earth from eight to twelve inches high.
Baby pelicans are naked when they come out of the eggs, but within a week they are covered with white down. Their first feathers are grey.
When the young are about four weeks old they leave their nest and gather into groups with other young pelicans. From the time of hatching until the young are ready to feed on their own, the parents have bad to supply each one with about one hundred and fifty pounds of fish. In order to do this the parent birds may have bad to fly as far as one hundred miles a day to get food.
In September and October the white pelicans fly south to winter along the Gulf Coast. The brown pelicans follow much the same breeding pattern, but they are coastal birds and are seldom seen inland.
Pelican Pictures
