White Pelicans – and in comparison, Brown Pelicans
A wonderful bird is the pelican
His bill can hold more than his belican!
My father taught me this poem when I was a little girl. It is two lines from a longer poem written by Dixon Lanier Merritt in 1913. These two lines have always brought a smile to my face because they are so true. The bill* of a pelican can stretch to quite a large size! And in some ways – at least for me – it has always been a bit comical! Not straight forward at all like the beak* of a woodpecker or a robin.
When White Pelicans are in a large group like this, just what are they doing? They are all jammed together and floating along, which is probably why this formation is called ‘a raft’. Cleon’s photo right here and the one he posted in the Public Forum are both rafts of pelicans.
White Pelicans come together like this to forage. If you use your binoculars – or even better, a scope – you will see the water within and around the raft is often in turmoil. If you could look underneath the water you would see pelican legs all throughout the raft twisting, turning, and pumping away. They do this to agitate fish to come within reach of those huge beaks. And pelicans scoop them right up – you can actually watch this throughout the raft as you will see the pelicans dip their bills into the water over and over. Notice these rafts also move slowly forward through the water so the birds are moving as they forage.
If you have watched Brown Pelicans along the Atlantic, the Gulf, and Pacific coasts, you have probably seen them flying over open water looking for schools of fish and then diving straight down into the water. These birds do most of their foraging underwater, but will occasionally swim on the surface and dip their bills into the water to catch smaller fish. In my observations, Brown Pelicans do not form these large rafts. White Pelicans do not dive into the water – they do all their foraging from the surface.
I am curious as to how this behavior of White Pelicans to form rafts and use their legs and webbed feet to churn up fish developed. If anyone knows, please use the Public Forum to tell us. I have observed ocean birds forming rafts, but not nearly as frequently as White Pelicans: shearwaters, auks, and on occasion, cormorants. My observations have only been off the Atlantic coast of New England, Assateague Island National Seashore, VA, and the Outer Banks, NC. Have any of you observed other birds in rafts? Any of the other ocean birds like puffins, eiders, or scoters? And what about fresh water birds such as loons, grebes, or coots? What have you observed?
*What is the difference between a bill and a beak? See my article “Beak or Bill ….. Is there a difference?” under Articles in the menu of this website.