#brown pelicans

[antiqueanimals]

Florida Wildlife, January 1966. Illustration by Wallace Hughes.

Internet Archive

[vuelode-irbis]

Me and the besties

Inspired by some pelicans i saw at the river and two of my best friends

[ID: a digital painting that shows three brown pelicans (Pelecanus occidentalis) perched in a white, wooden mast each. Two of them look at the camera while the one in the middle is opening their beak and stretching their wings. Behind them, the background shows green trees and a blue sky without clouds. End ID].

[kimlion1313]

Perry P & the Scoops album cover

Sebastian Inlet, FL - Jan 24

[rjzimmerman]

Excerpt from this Smithsonian story:

Several hundred starving, sick or injured brown pelicans have turned up on beaches throughout California over the past few weeks, with wildlife officials still unable to pinpoint the cause of what they are calling a “crisis.”

The California Department of Fish and Wildlife (CDFW), along with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) and other non-governmental partners, have been working to collect and rehabilitate the birds, many of which are anemic, dehydrated and underweight.

“They’re in really poor physical shape. They’re starving, and they haven’t gotten enough nutrition,” Russ Curtis, a spokesperson for the nonprofit organization International Bird Rescue, which is helping in the rescue efforts, tells KQED’s Annelise Finney.

“When there’s not the fishing stock that they can find, they take chances around fishing piers and fishing boats and places where there are people with fishing tackle,” Curtis says, explaining that some pelicans have been hurt by fishing hooks and lines they encounter near the shore.

As of this week, the Wetlands and Wildlife Care Center (WWCC) in Huntington Beach and Santa Barbara Wildlife Care Network have admitted more than 100 pelicans each, while International Bird Rescue has taken 260 pelicans into its two California facilities—one in Los Angeles County, and one in the San Francisco Bay Area, reports Cheri Carlson of the Ventura County Star.

Other birds have been found dead on beaches. Necropsies have revealed starvation as their cause of death, which has puzzled scientists. Populations of fish that pelican forage, by all accounts, remain abundant off the Pacific coast.

We also know that there’s supposedly plenty of anchovies and their food out there in the ocean, so we don’t really know why they are not able to forage yet,” Debbie McGuire, executive director of the Wetlands and Wildlife Care Center, tells Eugene Garcia of theAssociated Press.

Brown pelicans are known to spend their non-breeding months throughout the entirety of the state’s coastline, and the sick birds have been found in a variety of locations. In northern California, most birds have been rescued around Monterey and Santa Cruz, while those in southern California have been found by officials in a variety of traditional and non-traditional habitats. Two dozen pelicans were found on Newport Beach and dozens more were picked up around Huntington Beach—but sick birds have also been identified in a lake at SoFi stadium, the home of the NFL’s Los Angeles Rams, and at a Malibu fire station, the Guardian’sDani Anguiano reports.In rescue efforts, the first step is to support the birds with warmth. “The great news is the vast majority are recovering if we can get them through those first couple of critical hours of hypothermia,” Elizabeth Wood, the WWCC’s veterinarian and medical director, says in a video posted to Facebook.

[rachelsrandomsphotos]

Brown Pelican (Pelecanus occidentalis)

Taken at the Sebastian Inlet in Sebastian, FL

[ladyaldhelm]

Waterfowl and Water Birds Photographs (various places)

[bluebelly-sun-serpentine]

May 26th, 2024

These pelicans likely died of hunger rather than disease - a similar mass starvation event occurred off the coast here in 2022, and while brown pelican deaths this season seem to be slowing, it's likely this is not the end of their famine. There are theories about spring storms leading to poor visibility and depleted anchovy stock, but as far as I know, the causes are somewhat complex. When I last checked, there were still hundreds of birds checked into rehab facilities statewide, and hundreds had died while in rehab just this spring, which is not to speak of those birds who don't make it back to shore or are never found by rescuers.

[whatnext10]

Brown Pelicans are Still Beautiful in the Fall

Fall Pelican Even though I went to Cedar Key last week hoping to see the flamingos, I did also see quite a few other interesting animals and plants while out there, too. As I have said before, a day spent exploring Cedar Key and the surrounding area is never a disappointment. One of the many birds that I came across was this pretty brown pelican. Their breeding season is over now, and they are…

[caveundertree]

Brown pelicans

Cormorants

Used to be a dock

[pamwmsn]

@jayflemingphotography

Brown Pelicans gather by the thousands every spring to nest on the remote islets of the Smith Island, Maryland archipelago.

[antiqueanimals]

Wildlife in North Carolina. July 1977. Illustration by Duane Raver Jr.

Internet Archive

[kimlion1313]

Tropical hues

Vero Beach, FL - Jan 24

[mel-smeld]

Grey days

[rachelsrandomsphotos]

Brown Pelican (Pelecanus occidentalis)

Taken in Satellite Beach, FL

[starshipblueberry]

Brown pelicans I watched for an hour on a beach I was playing on with my kids ❤️

don’t let birding become a wealthy people thing. you don’t need to complete a list of 500+ birds, you don’t need to travel around the world, you don’t need to have seen a species only seen by a handful of people in the wild. it’s OK to just watch the birds in your area, with or without binoculars; gatekeeping birdwatching is ridiculous and i hate to see it

[joqatana]