Wildlife Watching Wednesday: The Strange-Looking Brown Pelican
By: Tom Berg
Visitors to our Gulf coast states, like Florida, Texas and Louisiana – just to name a few – are certainly familiar with the brown pelican. Many brown pelicans are year-round residents along the salty shores of these states, but these pelicans also live along the Atlantic and Pacific coasts, as well. Some even migrate as far north as Canada on the east coast and Alaska on the west coast!
Brown pelicans are strange-looking birds. They are very large, with a wingspan of six to seven feet. They can weigh up to ten pounds, too. They are typically brown or grayish-brown, with white heads and white on the sides of their neck. Breeding adults often have yellow on their head, too. Young brown pelicans are dark brown on their wings, neck and head, like the juvenile shown here.
Their strangest feature, though, is their extremely long bill with a huge, flexible throat pouch. This unusual body part is called a gular pouch. It is stretchy and flexible, and it can hold three gallons of water! They can scoop up large numbers of small fish in their pouch, and it can actually hold more than twenty pounds of food!
Brown pelicans are definitely fish eaters, and they usually catch their fish by diving head-first into the water, often from a height of 10 to 20 feet. They can dive from much higher, too, as some individuals dive from as high as 50-60 feet! Brown pelicans are the only pelican species that dives like this. Other species, like the American white pelican, feed by swimming along on the surface and scooping their bill underwater to trap small fish in their throat pouch.
Although they are sometimes found inland near freshwater lakes, brown pelicans are mainly a marine species and they tend to stay right along the saltwater coast. They are most common around shallow beaches and other shallow areas, since it is easier for them to catch small fish in shallow water. The next time you go to the beach, keep an eye out for the brown pelican!
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