THE FLY-FISHING PELICAN

With Its Great Wings Spanning a Full Seven Feet, the West's Brown Pelican's No Slouch

TEXT AND PHOTOGRAPHS BY JAMES TALLON Back in 1910, Dixson Lanier Merritt moved the pelican from just one more bigbeaked bird into celebrity status: A wonderful bird is the pelican. His beak can hold more than his belican. He takes in his beak food enough for a week. But I'm darned if I see how the helican. The limerick suggests that Merritt had a spelling disorder and lacked a degree in beak capacity. According to the people who know, there are eight species of pelicans: eastern white, pinkbacked, spot-billed, Dalmatian, Australian, Peruvian, American white, and the brown, and maybe a few subspecies in between. With my preference for the Great American West, that limits me to the brown sometimes referred to as the California brown and the American white, for this is their territory. Although you may spot an occasional brown pelican anyplace in Arizona where fish and water might be, mostly the bird prefers the ocean. You don't have to be a true birder to enjoy watching pelicans. The brown pelican, four feet long with a wingspan of about seven feet, can float seemingly indefinitely just a fraction of an inch above the sea long strings of them, pelicans, not fractions with only the occasional wingbeat. Record keepers say brown pelicans will dive on fish from as high as 30 feet above the water. Despite clamping their lids shut, this is hard on the eyeballs, and many brown pelicans eventually go blind from this practice. The American white pelican prefers freshwater. And we see more pelicans in Arizona than some birds non-Arizona Highways subscribers generally associate with the state: specifically the buzzards, both turkey and black varieties. The white pelican is nearly six feet long with a wingspan of nine feet some bigger than the California condor. A few are residents of Arizona. They migrate from northerly breeding waters found in Washington, Montana, Idaho, and Utah. They relocate along the Salt, Gila, and lower Colorado rivers, and in relative impoundments like Roosevelt Lake, Painted Rock Reservoir, and Martinez Lake, to name a few; as well as in sanctuaries like Havasu, Cibola, and Imperial national wildlife refuges. From personal experience on the lower Colorado River at Imperial National Wildlife Refuge, I learned that white pelicans fly considerably higher than browns. They soar upward on thermals, with few noticeable wingbeats, to where they are nearly out of sight. Unlike brown pelicans, the whites never risk their necks to dine; they form a horseshoeshaped line with their bodies and noisily drive schools of fish into shallow water, where they can scoop them up with their wondrous beaks. The pelican beak consists of a three-layered skin bag, an inside, outside, and mucous membrane called a gular sac. Not only does this sac extend the entire length of the bird's beak, it continues halfway down the neck. In it, browns can hold about a gallon of food and water; whites, up to three gallons. After a pelican catches fish, it elevates the beak, contracts the pouch, and forces water out of the corners of its mouth.

Until their eggs are laid, white pelicans have horny plates on their beaks. The significance of that cannot be anthropomorphized into human appearance or behavior. I was recently in the children's section of the Phoenix Zoo where three white pelicans were paddling about an adjacent pond. They had clipped wings, and I assumed they were injured birds given asylum and now domesticated. A brown pelican slid out of the sky and skidded across the surface, settled in, and picked at some unseen goodies under the surface. I later said to a zookeeper, “I see a wild brown pelican has dropped in for a visit.” Her reply was, “The helihas. . . .” I knew immediately I was talking to a like-minded person who loved and understood pelicans as I do.