pelican

 

common name for a large, gregarious aquatic bird of warm regions, allied to the cormorants and gannets. Pelicans are heavy-bodied, long-necked birds with large, flat bills. They are graceful swimmers and fliers, often seen flying in long lines or circling at great heights. Fish are stored in a deep, expansible pouch below the lower mandible; the young feed from the pouch and throat. The white pelican, Pelecanus onocrotalus, of North America ranges from the NW United States to the Gulf and Florida coasts. It is about 5 ft (152.5 cm) long with a wingspread of 8 to 10 ft (244–300.5 cm). Both sexes have white plumage with black primary wing feathers. The white pelican scoops fish into its pouch as it swims; the smaller brown pelican, P. occidentalis, dives from the air for its prey. The eastern brown pelican of the SE United States and tropical America and the California brown pelican are strictly ocean birds. The spectacled pelican is found in Australia and New Guinea. There are several Old World species. Pelicans are classified in the phylum Chordata, subphylum Vertebrata, class Aves, order Pelecaniformes, family Pelecanidae.

Pelican
Pink-backed Pelican (Pelecanus rufescens).
Scientific classification
Kingdom: Animalia Phylum: Chordata Class: Aves Order: Pelecaniformes Family: Pelecanidae Rafinesque, 1815 Genus: Pelecanus Linnaeus, 1758
Species
Pelecanus occidentalis Pelecanus thagus Pelecanus erythrorhynchos Pelecanus onocrotalus Pelecanus crispus Pelecanus rufescens Pelecanus philippensis Pelecanus conspicillatus

A pelican is any of several very large water birds with a distinctive pouch under the beak belonging to the bird family Pelecanidae.

Along with the darters, cormorants, gannets, boobies, frigatebirds, and tropicbirds, pelicans make up the order Pelecaniformes. Like other birds in that group, pelicans have all four toes webbed (they are totipalmate). Modern pelicans are found on all continents, except Antarctica. Birds of inland and coastal waters, they are absent from polar regions, the deep ocean, oceanic islands, and inland South America.

Appearance and behavior

Pelicans are large birds with enormous, pouched bills and long wings. The smallest of the pelican is the Brown Pelican (Pelecanus occidentalis), small individuals of which can be as little as 2.75 kg (6 lbs), 106 cm (42 in) and have a wingspan of 1.83 m (6 ft). The largest pelican species is believed to be the Dalmatian Pelican (Pelecanus crispus), at up to 15 kg (33 lbs), 183 cm (72 in) and a maximum wingspan of nearly 3.5 m (11.5 ft). The Dalmatian Pelican is also the rarest species of pelican, with the most common believed to be the Australian Pelican (though some estimates have placed the White Pelican at a higher population).

Pelicans have two primary ways of feeding:

• Group fishing: used by white pelicans all over the world. They will form a line to chase schools of small fish into shallow water, and then simply scoop them up. Large fish are caught with the bill-tip, then tossed up in the air to be caught and slid into the gullet head first.
• Plunge-diving: used almost exclusively by the American Brown Pelican, and rarely by white pelicans like the Peruvian Pelican or the Australian Pelican.

Occasionally, pelicans will consume animals other than fish. In one documented case, a pelican swallowed a live pigeon,^[1] and reports of similar incidents have surfaced. In fact, Pelicans are fairly opportunistic predators, and while fish forms the bulk of their diet due to being the most common food source where Pelicans nest, they will quite readily eat any other food that is available to them.^[2]

Pelicans are gregarious and nest colonially, the male bringing the material, the female heaping it up to form a simple structure. Pairs are monogamous for a single season but the pair bond extends only to the nesting area; mates are independent away from the nest.

Species

Brown Pelican Pelecanus occidentalis	Peruvian Pelican Pelecanus thagus	American White Pelican Pelecanus erythrorhynchos	Great White Pelican Pelecanus onocrotalus
Dalmatian Pelican Pelecanus crispus	Pink-backed Pelican Pelecanus rufescens	Spot-billed Pelican Pelecanus philippensis	Australian Pelican Pelecanus conspicillatus

From the fossil record,^[1] it is known that pelicans have been around for over 40 million years, the earliest fossil Pelecanus being found in early Miocene deposits in France. Prehistoric genera have been named Protopelicanus and Miopelecanus. The supposed Miocene pelican Liptornis from Argentina is a nomen dubium, being based on hitherto indeterminable fragments.

A number of fossil species are also known from the extant genus Pelecanus:

• Pelecanus alieus (Late Pliocene of Idaho, USA)
• Pelecanus cadimurka
• Pelecanus cauleyi
• Pelecanus gracilis
• Pelecanus halieus
• Pelecanus intermedius
• Pelecanus odessanus
• Pelecanus schreiberi
• Pelecanus sivalensis
• Pelecanus tirarensis

Symbolism and Culture

In medieval Europe, the pelican was thought to be particularly attentive to her young, to the point of providing her own blood when no other food was available. As a result, the pelican became a symbol of the Passion of Jesus and of the Eucharist. It also became a symbol in bestiaries for self-sacrifice, and was used in heraldry ("a pelican in her piety" or "a pelican vulning (wounding) herself"). Another version of this is that the pelican used to kill its young and then resurrect them with its blood, this being analogous to the sacrifice of Jesus. Thus the symbol of the Irish Blood Transfusion Service (IBTS) is a pelican, and for most of its existence the headquarters of the service was located at Pelican House in Dublin, Ireland.

For example, the emblems of both Corpus Christi College, Cambridge and Corpus Christi College, Oxford are pelicans, showing its use as a medieval Christian symbol {'Corpus Christi' - 'body of Christ'}.

This legend may have arisen because the pelican used to suffer from a disease that left a red mark on its chest^{[citation needed]}. Alternatively it may be that pelicans look as if they are doing that as they often press their bill into their chest to fully empty their pouch.

The symbol is used today on the Louisiana state flag and Louisiana state seal, as the Brown pelican is the Louisiana state bird. Likewise, the pelican is featured prominently on the seal of Louisiana State University and St. Paul's School (Concord, New Hampshire). A pelican logo is also used by the Portuguese bank Montepio Geral.[1]

The Moche people of ancient Peru worshipped nature.^[2] They placed emphasis on animals and often depicted pelicans in their art. ^[3]

References

1. ^ EvoWiki: Pelecaniformes.
2. ^ Benson, Elizabeth, The Mochica: A Culture of Peru. New York, NY: Praeger Press. 1972
3. ^ Berrin, Katherine & Larco Museum. The Spirit of Ancient Peru:Treasures from the Museo Arqueológico Rafael Larco Herrera. New York: Thames and Hudson, 1997.

Gallery

	Relief of a "pelican in her piety".	An Australian Pelican coming out of water.	A pelican in flight seen from underneath.
Pelicans flock flying over Havana Bay area.	Brown Pelicans taking off from the ocean.	A Brown Pelican in flight near the water.	Pelicans walking about the shores of Melbourne, Florida, USA.
A pelican cleaning itself.	Eastern White Pelican from Blackpool Zoo.	Pink-backed Pelican at the San Diego Wild Animal Park.	A pelican inside the Munich zoo.
Pelicans congregate at the Clearwater Beach marina.	A pelican on Pier 60 in the Atlantic Ocean near Clearwater Beach.	Pelican in flight over the Atlantic Ocean.

Poem

The famous limerick about pelicans: "A wonderful bird is the pelican. His bill will hold more than his belican. He can take in his beak, Food enough for a week, But I'm damned if I can see how the helican." was written by Dixon Lanier Merritt in 1910. [2]

External links

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

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