Pelecanus occidentalis
“A wonderful bird is the pelican; his bill can hold more than his belly can,” begins the limerick by Dixon Lanier Merritt. And it’s true — a pelican’s pouch can hold up to three times more than its stomach. This multi-purpose structure serves as a scoop, a cooling mechanism in hot weather, and as a trough for young pelicans, which retrieve food from their parents’ pouches.
Although the Brown Pelican is the smallest of the world’s eight pelican species, it’s still a big bird at about four feet long (including the bill), with a six-and-a-half-foot wingspan. The American White Pelican, North America’s only other pelican species, is a foot longer and has a nine-foot wingspan, dimensions that help rank it, along with the California Condor, Trumpeter Swan, and Golden Eagle, as among North America’s largest birds. The Brown Pelican, however, is arguably the most beautifully patterned of these birds, with breeding males and females displaying a pale yellow head, dark cinnamon neck, contrasting white throat, and black, white, or orange-red bill and throat pouch. The dark underparts are elegantly streaked with silver.
Driven almost to extinction twice — first by hunting and later by pesticides including DDT — the Brown Pelican today is a shining example of the successful conservation outcomes made possible by policies such as the Endangered Species Act, and the work of the Environmental Protection Agency. Declared Endangered in the 1970s, this charismatic bird is now a familiar sight along many coastlines, thanks to conservation legislation, public education, and decades of cooperation by a wide range of partners.
Unregulated shooting and pesticides were once the bane of many North American birds, including Brown Pelicans, Bald Eagles, and Peregrine Falcons. With the banning of the pesticide DDT and active conservation efforts, these birds have largely rebounded. Unfortunately, the Brown Pelican now faces other threats, and these dangers are growing.
The Brown Pelican may face trouble resulting from climate change, including rapid loss of coastline habitat and nesting islands, and flooding of estuaries as the sea level rises. In addition, the dramatic warming of coastal waters could lead to striking changes in the fish populations upon which pelicans and people depend.
Brown Pelicans are also at risk of being caught in fishing lines and hooks. Hooks can tear the gular (throat) pouch, making it difficult or impossible to catch fish, while legs or wings can become entangled in line, rendering birds unable to fly. Entanglement can also lead to necrosis and infection. Brown Pelicans are particularly prone to being caught on fishing hooks, as they often hunt the same fish that humans are fishing.
As with many bird species that spend the majority of their lives on the ocean, oil spills can be catastrophic to pelicans. Oil spills can kill birds outright, reduce their ability to rear young, and decimate populations of prey species, leading to starvation. Pelicans are also vulnerable to trash and plastics, which they may mistake for food.
Brown Pelicans are highly sensitive to disturbance at nesting colonies, and repeated disturbance can cause pelicans to abandon colony sites altogether. Increased boat traffic, fishing in waters near nesting colonies, and tourist activity can all cause Brown Pelicans to abandon their nests.
Thanks to concerted conservation action and the protections afforded by the Endangered Species Act, the Brown Pelican has come back from the brink of extinction, not once but twice! At ABC, we’re inspired by the wonder of birds and driven by our responsibility to find solutions to meet their greatest challenges. With science as our foundation, and with inclusion and partnership at the heart of all we do, we take bold action for birds across the Americas.
Through advocacy, ABC ensures birds like the Brown Pelican have a seat at the table. We advocate for policies that make a difference for birds and ecosystems, from addressing large-scale problems like climate change to defending the Endangered Species Act and securing vital funding for conservation. We take on challenging issues when birds are on the line. Learn about the issues ABC is tracking and take action at the link below!
Oceans and islands host some of the world’s greatest concentrations of birds, and some of the most rapidly declining species. ABC works with partners throughout the Western Hemisphere to address the problems of fisheries bycatch, overfishing, and the overwhelming presence of plastics in our waterways, all of which pose serious threats to Brown Pelicans.
Brown Pelicans are vulnerable to pollution from oil spills as well as discarded human waste, such as plastics, fishing line, hooks, and lead sinkers. To address trash pollution along the Gulf Coast, ABC and our partners created SPLASh (Stopping Plastics and Litter Along Shorelines), a community beach cleanup program in prime year-round pelican habitat.
Like many of its close relatives, including other pelicans, cormorants, and boobies, the Brown Pelican rarely vocalizes away from breeding sites. Nestlings, however, raise a racket through their squawking, especially as they beg for meals.
Credit: Andrew Spencer, XC102120. Accessible at www.xeno-canto.org/102120.
Year-round, Brown Pelicans use warm ocean coasts and estuaries. Pelicans breed in colonies, mostly on small coastal or offshore islands.
Specific Area
Coasts of North America and northern South America, and the Caribbean and Galápagos Islands
Range Detail
The Brown Pelican breeds along both coasts of North and South America, as well as on the Caribbean, Galápagos, and other outlying islands. On the Atlantic Coast, Brown Pelicans breed from the Chesapeake Bay south across coastal Venezuela. There are several disjunct breeding populations on the Pacific Coast: One between Point Conception in California and Punta Eugenia in Baja California; one in the Gulf of California; and one found from Nicaragua to Ecuador. In the nonbreeding season, pelicans range from the Olympic Peninsula to Coastal Peru on the Pacific Coast, and from coastal New Jersey to French Guiana and throughout the Caribbean in the Atlantic.
Brown Pelicans eat mostly fish, which they spot from up to 70 feet in the air before diving dramatically bill-first into the water. The force of the birds’ impact stuns small fish, enabling Brown Pelicans to scoop them up in their throat pouches. In shallow water or when fish school near the surface, a pelican may feed by simply floating on the surface of the water and seizing prey with its bill. Brown Pelicans also steal food from other seabirds, pilfer bait fish or guts at piers, and eat invertebrates such as prawns.
A male chooses a nest site where he advertises for females with a “head swaying” display, which entails opening his wings slightly and wagging his bill back and forth a few times in a horizontal position. This display is used by both males and females in recognition or greeting. In courtship, the male will present a piece of nesting material, such as a stick, to the female with his wings extended, head held horizontal, and throat pouch distended. The female, for her part, will take the stick from him and perform the head swaying display.
Brown Pelicans nest in busy colonies, either on the ground amid low bushes and other vegetation, or, in the tropical parts of their range, in the tops of trees. Ground nests may be a shallow depression or a large mound of soil and debris with a cup scraped into the top. A treetop nest usually consists of reeds, grass, and straw heaped on a mound of sticks interwoven with the supporting tree branches. Brown Pelican pairs work cooperatively to build the nest, the male delivering material to the female, who does the construction.
The female usually lays three white eggs, which both parents take turns incubating, mostly using their feet — essentially standing on the eggs to shelter them from cold air or hot sun. Pelican chicks begin life blind and featherless. Both parents bring fish back to the young birds in their throat pouches and regurgitate the food, which the chicks snap up. In all, the Brown Pelican breeding cycle lasts about four and a half months, from the start of a pair’s courtship to the young leaving the nest.
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