Pelican

For other uses, see Pelican (disambiguation).

Pelican Temporal range: Oligocene-Recent, 30–0 Ma PreЄ Є O S D C P T J K Pg N
Australian Pelican (Pelecanus conspicillatus)  Pelican chick
Scientific classification
Kingdom:	Animalia
Phylum:	Chordata
Class:	Aves
Order:	Pelecaniformes
Family:	Pelecanidae Rafinesque, 1815
Genus:	Pelecanus Linnaeus, 1758
Species
See text

Pelicans are large water birds in the family Pelecanidae. The name is derived from the Ancient Greek word πελεκυς pelekys meaning “axe” and applied to birds that supposedly cut wood with their bills or beaks. They are characterized by a large beak and a throat pouch, used to drain water from caught prey when hunting. Modern pelicans, of which there are eight species, are found on all continents except Antarctica. They primarily inhabit warm regions, though breeding ranges extend to latitudes of 45° South (Australian Pelicans in Tasmania) and 60° North (American White Pelicans in western Canada). Birds of inland and coastal waters, they are absent from polar regions, the deep ocean, oceanic islands, and inland South America.

Taxonomy and systematics

Pelicans give their name to the order Pelecaniformes, an order which has had a varied taxonomic history. Darters, cormorants, gannets, boobies, frigatebirds, and tropicbirds were classically held to be the other members but all have now been transferred to other orders. Mounting evidence pointed to the Shoebill as a close relative of pelicans. The current International Ornithological Committee classification has pelicans grouped with the Shoebill (Balaenicipitidae), Hamerkop (Scopidae), ibises and spoonbills (Threskiornithidae) and herons, egrets and bitterns (Ardeidae).

The pelicans can be divided into two groups: those with mostly white adult plumage, which nest on the ground (Australian, Dalmatian, Great White, and American White Pelicans), and those with grey or brown plumage, which nest in trees (Pink-backed, Spot-billed, and Brown, plus the Peruvian Pelican, which nests on sea rocks). The Peruvian Pelican is sometimes considered conspecific with the Brown Pelican.

Fossil record

From the fossil record it is known that pelicans have been around for over 30 million years, the earliest fossil Pelecanus being found in Oligocene deposits in France. A prehistoric genus has been named Miopelecanus, while Protopelicanus may be a pelicanid or pelecaniform – or a similar aquatic bird such as a pseudotooth bird (Pelagornithidae). The supposed Miocene pelican Liptornis from Argentina is a nomen dubium, being based on hitherto indeterminable fragments.

Fossil finds from North America have been meagre, compared with Europe, which has a richer fossil record. Several Pelecanus species have been described from fossil material, including:

• Pelecanus cadimurka Rich & van Tets, 1981 (Late Pliocene, South Australia}
• Pelecanus cautleyi Davies, 1880 (Early Pliocene, Siwalik Hills, India)
• Pelecanus gracilis Milne-Edwards, 1863 (Early Miocene, France) (see: Miopelecanus)
• Pelecanus halieus Wetmore, 1933 (Late Pliocene, Idaho, USA)
• Pelecanus intermedius Fraas, 1870 (Middle Miocene, Germany) (transferred by Cheneval in 1984 to Miopelecanus)
• Pelecanus odessanus Widhalm (1886) (Late Miocene, near Odessa, Ukraine)
• Pelecanus schreiberi Olson, 1999 (Early Pliocene, North Carolina, USA)
• Pelecanus sivalensis Davies, 1880 (Early Pliocene, Siwalik Hills, India)
• Pelecanus tirarensis Miller, 1966 (Late Oligocene to Middle Miocene, South Australia)

Description

An Australian Pelican gliding with its large wings extended

Pelicans are large birds with large pouched bills. The smallest is the Brown Pelican (P. occidentalis), small individuals of which can be as little as 2.75 kg (6 lb), 106 cm (42 in) long, and can have a wingspan of as little as 1.83 m (6 ft). The largest is believed to be the Dalmatian Pelican (P. crispus), at up to 15 kg (33 lb), 183 cm (72 in) long, with a maximum wingspan of 3 m (nearly 10 ft). The Australian Pelican has the longest bill of any bird. The tail is short and square, with 20 to 24 feathers. The wings are long and have the unusually large number of 30 to 35 secondary flight feathers.

Behaviour

Brown Pelican plunge diving, Florida

Pelicans swim well with their short, strong legs and their fully webbed feet (as with all birds in the order Pelecaniformes). They rub the backs of their heads on their preen glands to pick up their oily secretion, which they transfer to their plumage to waterproof it. A fibrous layer deep in the breast muscles can hold the wings rigidly horizontal for gliding and soaring. Thus they can exploit thermals to commute over 150 km (93 mi) to feeding areas.

Feeding

Brown Pelicans diving into the sea to catch fish in Jamaica

The diet of a Pelican usually consists of fish, but they also eat amphibians, crustaceans and on some occasions, smaller birds. They often catch fish by expanding the throat pouch. Then they must drain the pouch above the surface before they can swallow. This operation takes up to a minute, during which time other seabirds are particularly likely to steal the fish. A gull will sometimes stand on the pelican's head, peck it by way of distraction, and grab a fish from the open bill if it can. Pelicans in their turn sometimes pirate prey from other seabirds.

In deep water, white pelicans often fish alone. Nearer the shore, several will often form a line or make an encircling movement to drive schools of small fish into the shallows. They beat their wings on the surface of the water to do this and then scoop up the prey. Large fish are caught with the bill-tip, then tossed up in the air to be caught and slid into the gullet head first.

The Brown Pelican of North America usually plunge-dives for its prey, often a type of herring known as menhaden. Rarely, other species such as the Peruvian Pelican and the Australian Pelican also practice this fishing method.

Avivory

Consumption of other birds is rare. It came to public attention in 2006, when footage of a Great White Pelican swallowing a living pigeon in St. James's Park, London was captured; although such incidents had been long claimed to have happened there. According to tourists watching it, the pelican walked to the pigeon and grabbed it in its beak, starting a 20 minute struggle which ended when the victim was swallowed "head first down while flapping all the way down". A Great White Pelican in Zoo Basel has been nicknamed Killer Johnny because of its habit of eating ducks.

It has been suggested that feeding on other birds is more likely with captive pelicans that live in a semi-urban environment and are in constant close contact with humans, although it has been observed in the wild. On the island of Malgas in South Africa, the biologist Marta de Ponte was the first to record Great White Pelicans eating Cape Gannet chicks. The pelicans were then captured on film exhibiting this behaviour in the BBC documentary Life (BBC TV series). The same species of pelican has been observed swallowing Cape cormorants, kelp gulls, swift terns and African penguins.

Breeding

Pelicans are gregarious and nest colonially. The ground-nesting (white) species have a complex communal courtship involving a group of males chasing a single female in the air, on land, or in the water while pointing, gaping, and thrusting their bills at each other. They can finish the process in a day. The tree-nesting species have a simpler process in which perched males advertise for females.

In all species copulation begins shortly after pairing and continues for 3 to 10 days before egg-laying. The male brings the nesting material, ground-nesters (which may not build a nest) sometimes in the pouch and tree-nesters crosswise in the bill. The female then heaps the material up to form a simple structure.

Both sexes incubate with the eggs on top of or below the feet. They may display when changing shifts. All species lay at least two eggs, and hatching success for undisturbed pairs can be as high as 95 percent, but because of competition between siblings or outright siblicide, usually all but one nestling dies within the first few weeks (or later in the Pink-backed and Spot-billed species). The young are fed copiously. Before or especially after being fed, they may seem to have a seizure that ends in falling unconscious; the reason is not clearly known.

Parents of ground-nesting species have another strange behaviour: they sometimes drag older young around roughly by the head before feeding them. The young of these species gather in "pods" or "crèches" of up to 100 birds in which parents recognize and feed only their own offspring. By 6 to 8 weeks they wander around, occasionally swimming, and may practice communal feeding.

Young of all species fledge 10 to 12 weeks after hatching. They may remain with their parents afterwards, but are now seldom or never fed. Overall breeding success is highly inconsistent.

Pairs are monogamous for a single season, but the pair bond extends only to the nesting area; mates are independent away from the nest.

Status and conservation

The Dalmatian Pelican and the Spot-billed Pelican are the rarest species, with the population of the former estimated at between 10,000 and 20,000 and that of the latter at 13,000 to 18,000. The most common is believed to be the Australian Pelican, with a population generally estimated at around 400,000 individuals. However, estimates for the species have varied wildly between 100,000 and 1,000,000 over the years, and it is possible that the White Pelican, the population of which is more consistently estimated at 270,000 and 290,000 individuals, is in fact the more common species. The Brown Pelican may be even more numerous with estimates of 650,000 birds throughout its range. It has been removed from the endangered species list.

Mythology and popular culture

Pelicans on a Fifth Dynasty relief at the Abu Gorab temple, Egypt

Moche pelican container from the Larco Museum Collection Lima, Peru

Picture of a vulning pelican from a church in Althofen, Austria

Ancient Egypt

The pelican (Henet in Egyptian) was associated in Ancient Egypt with death and the afterlife. It was depicted in art on the walls of tombs, and figured in funerary texts, as a protective symbol against snakes. Henet was also referred to in the Pyramid Texts as the 'mother of the king' and thus seen as a goddess. References in non-royal funerary papyri show that the pelican was believed to possess the ability to prophesy safe passage in the underworld for someone who had died.

Australia

An origin myth from the Murri people of Queensland, cited by Andrew Lang, describes how the Australian Pelican acquired its black and white plumage. The pelican, formerly a black bird, made a canoe during a flood in order to save drowning people. He fell in love with a woman he thus saved, but she and her friends tricked him and escaped. The pelican consequently prepared to go to war against them by daubing himself with white clay as war paint. However, before he had finished, another pelican, on seeing such a strange piebald creature, killed him with its beak, since when all such pelicans have been black and white.

Pre-Columbian America

The Moche people of ancient Peru worshipped nature. They placed emphasis on animals and often depicted pelicans in their art.

Christianity

In medieval Europe, the pelican was thought to be particularly attentive to her young, to the point of providing her own blood by wounding her own breast when no other food was available. As a result, the pelican became a symbol of the Passion of Jesus and of the Eucharist. A reference to this mythical characteristic is contained for example in the hymn by Saint Thomas Aquinas, "Adoro te devote" or "Humbly We Adore Thee", where in the penultimate verse he describes Christ as the "loving divine pelican, able to provide nourishment from his breast".

The self-sacrificial aspect of the pelican was re-inforced by the widely-read mediaeval bestiaries. The device of "a pelican in her piety" or "a pelican vulning (from Latin vulno to wound) herself" was used in heraldry. An older version of the myth is that the pelican used to kill its young then resurrect them with its blood, again analogous to the sacrifice of Jesus. Likewise a folktale from India says that a pelican killed her young by rough treatment but was then so contrite that she resurrected them with her own blood.

These legends may have arisen because of the impression that a pelican sometimes gives that it is stabbing itself with its bill. In reality, it often presses this onto its chest in order to fully empty the pouch. Another possibility is the fact that the bird often rests with its bill on its breast. The Dalmatian Pelican has a blood-red pouch in the early breeding season and this fact may have contributed to the myth.

Heraldry

Pelicans have featured extensively in heraldry. Corpus Christi College, Cambridge features a pelican on its coat of arms as does Corpus Christi College, Oxford. The medical faculties of Charles University in Prague also have a pelican as their emblem. These uses symbolise the bird as a caring mother, representing Christ feeding his followers with his body and blood ('Corpus Christi' means 'body of Christ').

Modern usage

The symbol of the Irish Blood Transfusion Service is a pelican, and for most of its existence the headquarters of the service was located at Pelican House in Dublin, Ireland. The pelican is the national bird of Sint Maarten and features on its coat of arms. It is also used on the Louisiana state flag and Louisiana state seal, as the Brown pelican is the Louisiana state bird. The pelican is featured prominently on the seals of Loomis Chaffee, Louisiana State University, and Tulane University, and is also the mascot of Tulane. A pelican logo is used by the Portuguese bank Montepio Geral.[1]

A pelican is depicted on the reverse of the Albanian 1 lek coin, issued in 1996.

Species

Living species of Pelecanus
Common and scientific names	Image	Description	Range and status
Brown Pelican (Pelecanus occidentalis)		Length 106-137 cm, wingspan 1.83–2.5 m, weight 2.75–5.5 kg. Smallest pelican; distinguished by brown plumage; feeds by plunge diving.	Coastal distribution; five subspecies, ranging from North America and Caribbean to northern South America and Galapagos. Status: Least Concern.
Peruvian Pelican (Pelecanus thagus)		Length 150 cm, weight 7 kg. Dark with a white stripe from the crown down the sides of the neck.	Monotypic; coastal Peru and Chile. Status: Near Threatened.
Spot-billed Pelican (Pelecanus philippensis)		Length 125–152 cm long, weight 4.1–6 kg. Mainly white, with a grey hindneck crest and brownish tail.	Southern Asia from southern Pakistan across India east to Indonesia; extinct in the Philippines. Status: Near Threatened.
Pink-backed Pelican (Pelecanus rufescens)		Length 125–155 cm, wingspan 2.15–2.9 m, weight 4–7 kg. Grey and white plumage, occasionally pinkish on the back, with a yellow upper mandible and grey pouch.	Africa and southern Arabia; extinct in Madagascar. Status: Least Concern.
American White Pelican (Pelecanus erythrorhynchos)		Length 130–170 cm, wingspan 2.4–3 m, usual weight range 5–9.1 kg. Plumage almost entirely bright white, except for black primary and secondary remiges only visible in flight.	Inland North America. Status: Least Concern.
Great White Pelican ( Pelecanus onocrotalus)		Length 160 cm, wingspan 2.8 m, weight 10 kg. Plumage pure white, with pink facial patch and legs.	Patchy distribution from eastern Mediterranean east to Vietnam and south to South Africa. Status: Least Concern.
Dalmatian Pelican ( Pelecanus crispus)		Length 160–180 cm, wingspan 3 m, weight 11–15 kg. Largest pelican; differs from Great White Pelican in having curly nape feathers, grey legs and greyish-white plumage.	South-eastern Europe to India and China. Status: Vulnerable.
Australian Pelican (Pelecanus conspicillatus)		Length 160–180 cm, wingspan 2.3–2.6 m, usual weight range 4.54–7.7 kg. Predominantly white with black along primaries and very large, pale pinkish bill.	Australia and southern New Guinea; vagrant to New Zealand, Fiji and Wallacea. Status: Least Concern.

External links

• The Symbolism of the Pelican article in the Arlington Catholic Herald.
• Pelican videos on the Internet Bird Collection