Pelican
| Pelicans | |
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| Pink-backed Pelicans (Pelecanus rufescens). | |
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| Family: | Pelecanidae Rafinesque, 1815
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| Genus: | Pelecanus Linnaeus, 1758
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A pelican is any of several very large water birds with a distinctive pouch under the beak belonging to the bird family Pelecanidae. Along with the darters, cormorants, gannets, boobies, frigatebirds, and tropicbirds, they make up the order Pelecaniformes. Like other birds in that group, 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 use two different ways to feed:
- 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, but only rarely by white pelicans like the Peruvian Pelican of the western South American coast, or the Australian Pelican.
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; away from the nest mates are independent.
Symbolism
In medieval Europe, the pelican was thought to be particularly attentive to her young, to the point of providing her own blood when no other food was available. As a result, the pelican became a symbol of the Passion of Jesus and of the Eucharist. It also became a symbol in bestiaries for self-sacrifice, and was used in heraldry ("a pelican in her piety" or "a pelican vulning (wounding) herself"). Another version of this is that the Pelican used to kill its young and then resurrect them with its blood, this being analogous to the sacrifice of Jesus.
This legend may have arisen because the pelican used to suffer from a disease that left a red mark on its chest[citation needed]. Alternatively it may be that pelicans look as if they are doing that as they often press their bill into their chest to fully empty their pouch.
The symbol is used today on the Louisiana state flag and Louisiana state seal, as the Brown pelican is the Louisiana state bird.
Systematics
Species
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| Pelecanus occidentalis | Pelecanus thagus | Pelecanus erythrorhynchos | Pelecanus onocrotalus | Pelecanus crispus | Pelecanus rufescens | Pelecanus philippensis | Pelecanus conspicillatus |
| Brown Pelican | Peruvian Pelican | American White Pelican | Great White Pelican | Dalmatian Pelican | Pink-backed Pelican | Spot-billed Pelican | Australian Pelican |
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
External links
- The Medieval Pelican
- Pelican videos on the Internet Bird Collection
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Relief of a "pelican in her piety" -
An Australian Pelican coming out of water -
A pelican in flight seen from underneath -
Brown Pelicans taking off from the ocean -
A Brown Pelican in flight near the water.
