How Much Can a Pelican Hold in Its Beak? The Pouch Explained

How big is a pelican’s pouch?

The pouch, called the gular pouch, is a large fold of bare skin that hangs beneath the lower half of the bill. In the brown pelican, whose bill is about 28–35 cm (11–14 in) long, it can hold around 11 liters (3 gallons) of water when fully stretched. That is a big load for a bird that weighs only about 2–5 kg (4.4–11 lb), and the water in the pouch can briefly weigh more than the bird itself.

The figure applies to water caught during a dive, not to fish. A pelican never fills its pouch with 3 gallons of fish, and the weight of a full pouch of water is one reason it drains it at once before taking off.

Larger pelicans have even bigger pouches. The American white pelican and the Australian pelican, both roughly twice the brown pelican’s weight, have bills around 30–50 cm (12–20 in) long, and the Australian pelican’s bill is the longest of any bird.

How the pouch works

The secret lies in the jaw. A pelican’s lower jaw is made of two long, thin bones that are joined only at the tip and can bow outward. When the bill opens underwater, the bones spread apart, the elastic skin between them balloons out, and the pouch fills with water and fish in a fraction of a second.

The pouch is lined with a network of small muscles that let the bird tighten it again. To drain it, the pelican closes its bill, tips its head forward and lets the water squeeze out through the gaps at the sides of the bill. This can take several seconds or longer. Then it raises its bill and gulps the fish down, usually head-first, which keeps fins and spines from catching in the throat.

Brown pelicans fill the pouch by plunge-diving from the air, as explained in How do pelicans dive without getting hurt? Most other pelicans fill it while swimming, dipping their bills into the water, sometimes in groups that drive fish into the shallows.

What else is the pouch used for?

Catching fish is the main job, but the pouch has other uses:

• Keeping cool: on hot days, pelicans flutter the thin skin of the pouch rapidly, a behavior called gular fluttering. Moving air over the moist, blood-rich skin helps release heat, much as panting does for a dog.
• Feeding chicks: adults carry fish to the nest in the throat and stomach and bring it back up. Chicks reach deep into the parent’s bill and pouch to feed.
• Courtship and display: in the breeding season the pouch of some pelicans changes color. Pacific coast brown pelicans develop a bright red base to the pouch, and pelicans show off the pouch in head-swaying displays.
• Drinking: pelicans can scoop up rainwater and fresh water when it is available, although brown pelicans can also drink seawater thanks to their salt glands.

Do pelicans keep fish in their pouch?

No. A common myth says pelicans fill their pouches with fish and fly off to eat them later. In reality, a pelican swallows its catch within seconds of surfacing, partly because gulls and other birds are waiting to steal it. Laughing gulls are known to perch on a brown pelican’s head and snatch fish from the bill while it drains the pouch.

The pouch is also not a storage bag for carrying fish long distances. Food for chicks travels inside the parent’s body and is regurgitated at the nest.

The famous pelican limerick

The pelican’s oversized bill inspired one of the best-known comic verses in English. Its opening lines read: “A wonderful bird is the pelican, His bill will hold more than his belican.” The limerick was written in 1910 by American newspaper editor Dixon Lanier Merritt, though it is often wrongly credited to Ogden Nash.

It is a joke, but it happens to be true for the brown pelican: the pouch really can hold about three times more than the stomach. The verse goes on to claim the bird can carry a week’s food in its beak, which is not true.

How pelicans compare with other fish-catching birds

Other birds use very different tools to catch fish. Puffins hold rows of small fish crosswise in their bills using spines on the tongue and palate. Ospreys snatch fish with their feet, and kingfishers spear them with a dagger-like beak. The pelican is unusual in using a giant net of skin. For more on the pelican itself, including its colonies and recovery from DDT, see our brown pelican profile, and for another expert angler, read How do ospreys catch fish?