American White Pelican
From WikiBird
Contents |
Size
Length: 130-180cm (50–70in), Wingspan: 300cm (118in)
Field Marks
Large white bird with with black primaries and outer secondaries and an enormous orange bill and pouch. They are graceful in flight, moving their wings in slow powerful strokes. Flies with neck tucked. Short orange legs and feet. Immature has brown-gray mottling about wing coverts with gray to flesh-colored bill. Sexes similar.
Similar species
Does not plunge into water from the air as Brown Pelicans do but feeds while swimming
Sounds
Feeding & Behavior
Instead of diving for food it practices cooperative fishing. Each bird eats more than 4 pounds of fish a day, mostly carp, chubs, shiners, perch, catfish, and jackfish.
Habitat & Nesting
Nest in colonies of several hundred pairs on islands in remote brackish and freshwater lakes of inland North America. The female lays 2 or 3 eggs in a shallow depression on the ground. Both parents incubate.
Range
They winter in central California and along the Pacific coast of Guatemala; also along the shores of the Gulf of Mexico.
Resources
