Brown Pelican (Pelecanus occidentalis): Facts and Diving

What does a brown pelican look like?

The brown pelican is a heavy, long-necked bird with short legs, webbed feet and a huge bill. Despite its name, the adult is mostly silvery gray-brown on the back and wings and dark brown below. The head is white with a yellowish wash on the crown, and in the breeding season the back of the neck turns a rich dark chestnut-brown.

The bill is 28–35 cm (11–14 in) long, with a hooked tip on the upper half. Beneath the lower half hangs the gular pouch, a bare, stretchy bag of skin. In most of the range the pouch is greenish black to gray, but on the Pacific coast birds develop a bright red pouch base in the breeding season.

Outside the breeding season the neck turns white. Young birds are plain gray-brown above with a whitish belly and take three to five years to reach full adult plumage. Males and females look alike, but males are larger, with longer bills.

How big are brown pelicans?

Although it is the smallest pelican, the brown pelican is still an impressive bird, with a wingspan wider than most people are tall.

Males are typically 15–20 percent heavier than females. Its close relative, the Peruvian pelican of the Humboldt Current, was once treated as the same species but is about twice as heavy, and the American white pelican is also roughly twice the brown pelican’s weight.

Habitat and range

The brown pelican is a strictly coastal bird of warm and temperate seas. On the Pacific side it ranges from British Columbia to northern Peru, including the Galápagos Islands. On the Atlantic side it lives from New Jersey and the Chesapeake Bay south along the US coast, around the Gulf of Mexico and through the Caribbean to Venezuela and northern Brazil.

In the United States it breeds in about ten coastal states, including California, Texas, Louisiana, Florida and the Carolinas. It lives in shallow bays, estuaries, mangrove swamps, harbors and along sandy beaches, and it rarely flies more than about 30 km (20 mi) out to sea. It roosts on sandbars, rocks, pilings, piers and jetties, and is a familiar sight in coastal towns.

Most populations are resident, but birds from the northern parts of the range move up the coast after breeding and head back south as the water cools. Storms occasionally carry pelicans far inland, where they turn up on lakes and reservoirs.

What do brown pelicans eat?

Brown pelicans eat mainly fish, especially small schooling species that swim near the surface. Menhaden are very important along the Atlantic and Gulf coasts, and anchovies and sardines along the Pacific coast. Mullet, herring, pinfish, silversides and other small fish are also taken, along with some shrimp and other crustaceans.

Pelicans spot fish while flying at heights of up to about 20 m (65 ft). They then fold their wings and plunge head-first into the sea, using the force of the dive to stun fish and scooping them up in the expanding pouch. Air sacs under the skin cushion the impact and help the bird bob back to the surface. How the dive works is explained in How do pelicans dive without getting hurt?

At the surface, the pelican tips its bill down to drain the water from its pouch before swallowing the fish whole. Laughing gulls often wait nearby, sometimes even perching on the pelican’s head, ready to steal a fish during this pause. The pouch can hold around 11 liters (3 gallons) of water, as described in How much can a pelican hold in its beak?

Behavior

Brown pelicans are sociable birds that roost, fly and breed in groups all year. A line of pelicans gliding low over the waves, rising and falling with the swell in near perfect formation, is one of the classic sights of American beaches. By flying just above the water, they take advantage of the cushion of air that reduces drag, a trick called ground effect.

In flight they hold the head drawn back onto the shoulders, with the bill resting on the folded neck. They alternate a few slow, powerful wingbeats with long glides. On land they move with a clumsy waddle, but in the air they are graceful and efficient.

Adults are mostly silent. At the nest they make low grunts and hissing sounds, while young birds squeal and beg noisily. Pelicans drink seawater and get rid of the extra salt through special salt glands above their eyes.

Reproduction and life cycle

Brown pelicans nest in colonies, usually on islands free of foxes, raccoons and other ground predators. Depending on the region, nests are built on the ground among dunes and grasses, or in mangroves and low trees. The male brings sticks, reeds and grass, and the female builds a nest that ranges from a shallow scrape to a bulky platform.

The timing of breeding varies a great deal with latitude, from winter in Florida and California to spring and summer farther north, and almost year-round in parts of the tropics. The female usually lays two or three chalky white eggs, and both parents incubate them for about 29–32 days, holding the eggs on top of their webbed feet instead of on a bare brood patch.

Chicks hatch naked and helpless, then grow a coat of white down. The parents feed them regurgitated fish, and the young dip their heads deep into the adult’s pouch to eat. Ground-nesting chicks may leave the nest and gather in groups called pods after a few weeks. Young pelicans fly at about 10–12 weeks old and usually begin breeding at three to five years.

How long do brown pelicans live?

Most young brown pelicans die in their first year, often while still learning to dive and fish successfully. Birds that make it through that difficult period can live a long time, often 10–25 years. The oldest known wild brown pelican, identified by its leg band, was 43 years old.

Adults have few natural predators, though bald eagles, large sharks, sea lions and, in California, river otters occasionally take them. At colonies, gulls, crows, raccoons, feral cats and fire ants prey on eggs and chicks.

Conservation status

The brown pelican is a well-known conservation success. From the 1940s, the pesticide DDT and related chemicals entered coastal food chains. They made pelican eggshells so thin that they broke under the weight of incubating parents, and nesting almost failed in southern California. By the early 1960s, brown pelicans had disappeared from Louisiana altogether.

The species was listed as endangered in the United States in 1970, and DDT was banned nationwide in 1972. Pelicans brought from Florida were released in Louisiana from 1968 onward, and numbers rose steadily across the country. Atlantic coast birds were removed from the endangered list in 1985, and the species was delisted throughout its range in 2009. Today the IUCN lists it as Least Concern with an increasing population.

Threats remain. Oil spills, including the 2010 Deepwater Horizon disaster in the Gulf of Mexico, killed many birds, and tangling in fishing line and hooks is a common cause of injury. Pacific populations depend heavily on sardines and anchovies, and several years of breeding failure in California have been linked to shortages of these fish.

Myths and facts

Myth: pelicans store fish in their pouch. The pouch is a scoop, not a shopping bag. Pelicans drain the water and swallow their catch right away; they carry food to their chicks in the throat and stomach.

Myth: all pelicans dive. Only the brown pelican and its close relative, the Peruvian pelican, plunge-dive. The other six species catch fish while swimming, often herding them together in groups.

Fact: pelicans are ancient. Fossils show that birds with a pelican-like bill and pouch already lived about 30 million years ago, and the basic design has changed remarkably little.

Brown pelicans and people

The brown pelican is the state bird of Louisiana, the Pelican State, and appears on its flag and seal. It is also the national bird of Barbados, Saint Kitts and Nevis, Saint Martin and the Turks and Caicos Islands. In 1903, President Theodore Roosevelt made Pelican Island in Florida the first US national wildlife refuge, largely to protect its nesting brown pelicans from plume hunters.

Pelicans are popular with beachgoers and photographers, and at fishing piers they often wait for scraps. Feeding them is discouraged, because it draws birds into danger from hooks, lines and boats. Another expert fish-catcher of the same coasts is the osprey.