Pelicans
A pelican is any of several very large water birds with a distinctive pouch under the beak belonging to the bird family Pelecanidae. Pelicans have all four toes webbed (they are totipalmate).
Modern pelicans are found on all continents except Antarctica. They are birds of inland and coastal waters and are absent from polar regions, the deep ocean, oceanic islands, and inland South America.
Pelicans can grow to a wingspan of three meters and weigh 13 kilograms, males being a little larger than females and having a longer bill.
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.
Rarely, pelicans will consume animals other than fish. In one documented case, a pelican swallowed a live pigeon.
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
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Brown Pelican Pelecanus occidentalis |
Peruvian Pelican Pelecanus thagus |
American White Pelican Pelecanus erythrorhynchos |
Great White Pelican Pelecanus onocrotalus |
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Dalmatian Pelican Pelecanus crispus |
Pink-backed Pelican Pelecanus rufescens |
Spot-billed Pelican Pelecanus philippensis |
Australian Pelican Pelecanus conspicillatus |
From the fossil record, it is known that pelicans have been around for over 40 million years. Prehistoric genera have been named Protopelicanus and Miopelecanus.
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
Copyright: Wikipedia. This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from Wikipedia.org
Relevant Web Resources: Pelicans - Bird Families of the World ... Pelican Photos ... Pelican Clipart
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