The White Pelican

By Al Lowe
Contributor

Have you seen this bird around Northern Ontario? It is not easily mistaken for anything else. It is a huge white bird with black wing tips. The span of its wings runs from 8 to 10 feet.
In flight, White Pelicans are extremely graceful, masters of the air currents. They usually fly in a V, like many geese do, but they tend to flap and coast in unison. There are times when they will wheel in graceful circles in the sky for hours at a time. No one knows why they do this, but it is a very common habit of theirs.
On the water this bird is still big - about twice the size of the average Canada Goose. And of course, they have that huge specialty of pelicans, the huge beak with its pouch. The beak is yellow and the face around the eye is bare. In the breeding season, a horn grows on the top of the beak. The purpose of this, too, is known only to other pelicans.
About that beak:
"A funny old bird is the pelican,
His beak can hold more then his belly can."
White Pelicans do not dive for fish like their brown cousins. They do fish, however, in another odd way. A whole lot of them will swim together, splashing their beaks on the water until they drive a lot of fish into the shallow water. Then that big beak comes in handy as they scoop up fish from the shore. Fish are tossed into the air, so they always go into the pelican's beak head first. They feed on fish of any size. They are actually quite valuable to fishermen, because they exert quite a bit of control over the coarse fish in a lake.
They big beak comes in handy in other ways, also - feeding youngsters, for example. When the chicks are young the adults, both male and female, regurgitate a sort of fishy soup. This runs down the front end of the pouch, and the young ones just pitch in and help themselves. As they get larger, the young birds just seem to disappear into that enormous beak of mom's and dad's. As they get still larger, the head is actually pushed right down the adult's throat, and the young one thrashes around in there, eating everything he can find. Pelicans are not fastidious eaters.
The White Pelican (Pelecanus erythorhynchos) breeds in the interior of North America, mainly on the prairies. The only Ontario breeding colony used to be on Lake of the Woods. Now, however, they are firmly established on Rainy Lake, and they appear to be expanding their range to more easterly lakes.
This is certainly one of the most outstanding birds of Northwestern Ontario.