Overview

Brown Pelican: Large, unmistakable seabird, gray-brown body, dark brown, pale yellow head and neck, oversized bill. Black legs, webbed feet. Feeds on fish by plunge diving and scooping them up with pouch. Powerful flight alternates flaps with short glides. Flies close to the water in straight line.

Brown Pelican: Pacific, Atlantic, and Gulf coasts north to Nova Scotia, occasionally found inland. Preferred habitats include sandy coastal beaches and lagoons, waterfronts and pilings, and rocky cliffs.

Listen to Call

Brown Pelican Voice

Voice Text

Generally silent

• The Brown Pelican can hold about three gallons of water (and fish) in its pouch. They have air sacks beneath their skin and in their bones that make them very buoyant.
• The Brown Pelican incubates its eggs in an unusual manner; it covers them with its webbed feet. This practice was detrimental to the species when the pesticide DDT was in common use. This pesticide caused thinning of the eggshells resulting in so many broken eggs that the species became endangered.
• Though adult pelicans may consume as much as four pounds of fish per day, they do not compete with sport or commercial fishermen because of type of fish they eat.
• A group of pelicans has many collective nouns, including a "brief", "pod", "pouch", "scoop", and "squadron" of pelicans.

• Double-crested Cormorant
• American White Pelican
• Magnificent Frigatebird
• Blue-footed Booby
• Masked Booby
• Brown Booby

Pelicans (Pelecanidae)

ORDER

The order PELECANIFORMES (pronounced pel-leh-KAN-ih-FOR-meez) is composed of six families including the gannets and boobies, darters, pirate-like frigatebirds and the unmistakable pelicans.

FAMILY TAXONOMY

In the Pelicanidae family (pronounced pel-leh-KAN-ih-dee), there are eight species of pelicans, all found in the same genus.

NORTH AMERICA

There are two species of pelicans in one genus in North America. These two species are the Brown Pelican and the huge American White Pelican.

KNOWN FOR

Pelicans are most well known for their massive, pouched bills that can hold fairly large fish and nearly three gallons of water.

PHYSICAL

Pelicans are large birds with short tails, long, broad wings, and large heads with a distinctive, massive pouched bill. They have rather stocky bodies with webbed feet on short legs.

COLORATION

The Brown Pelican of the Americas is one of the only pelican species with mostly brown plumage (the other being the closely related Peruvian Pelican of South America). Other species have plumages similar to that of the American White Pelican; gray or white with black markings on the wings. Other colors are limited to yellow as shown by the beak of the American White Pelican, and yellowish and reddish on the head and beak of the Brown Pelican during the breeding season.

GEOGRAPHIC HABITAT

Pelicans are aquatic birds that require large bodies of water with abundant fish populations. The two North American species avoid competition by occupying different habitats; the Brown Pelican in coastal marine waters and the American White Pelican breeding in extensive freshwater marshes of the central and western regions and wintering in southern, coastal lagoons.

MIGRATION

While Brown Pelicans are for the most part resident, the American White Pelican migrates to coastal lagoons in the southern United States and Mexico.

HABITS

Colony nesters and foraging in flocks, pelicans are social birds, the American White Pelican more so than the Brown. This species is rarely seen alone and is more often found in impressive flocks of hundreds that wheel and soar high above western wetlands on huge wings. When foraging, flocks of American White Pelicans dip their bills to scoop fish out of shallow marshes. This is in contrast to the spectacular ocean dives for fish that Brown Pelicans make.

CONSERVATION

In the past, DDT caused Brown Pelican populations to decline to the point of becoming endangered. Fortunately, since the banning of DDT in North America, this species has made a comeback and is once more fairly common. The American White Pelican though, has unfortunately been declining in recent years due to pesticides and drainage of its wetland habitat.

INTERESTING FACTS

Despite consuming large amount of fish, pelican species don’t compete with fisherman because they eat mostly “non-game” species. When foraging, American White Pelicans sometimes herd these fish into shallow water for easier pickings.

Author

Gary Owen Dick

Artist

Yury Lisyak