Overview:  The brown pelican is one of two pelican species found in North America.  The American white pelican (Pelecanus erythrorynchos) shares its winter range with the brown pelican along the southern Californian coast and has entirely white plumage and a pinkish-orange bill.  The brown pelican eats mainly small surface-schooling fish such as anchovy, and is the only pelican species that frequently dives after its prey.  This species nests in large colonies, relying almost exclusively upon small, inaccessible coastal islands as breeding sites, or rookeries.  This habit made the brown pelican easy prey for egg-hunters who would raid these rookeries by boat.  In the 19^th and early 20^th centuries, pelicans themselves were hunted for feathers and slaughtered en masse by fishermen who erroneously perceived them as competitors for commercially valuable fish.  The most dramatic reductions in pelican populations, however, were caused by pesticides such as DDT and endrin.  The threat of DDT is particularly insidious because it drastically lowers reproductive success of pelicans by interfering with the formation of calcium, which results in the production of brittle, thin-shelled eggs that end up being crushed by an incubating parent.  Run-off of DDT into streams, as well as the dumping of DDT wastes into the ocean, also causes direct poisoning.  “Bio-magnification” of pesticides occurs over time as non-lethal doses are ingested by fish and concentrated in their tissues.  Pelicans that consume large numbers of these fish risk ingesting a lethal dose of the stored poisons.  In 1970, DDT poisoning and eggshell-thinning resulted in almost complete reproductive failure on Anacapa Island (CA) when only a single fledgling was produced from an already stressed population of 552 nesting pairs.  In 1972, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) banned the use of DDT in the U.S. and put heavy restrictions on the use of other pesticides.  One year later, a pelican recovery plan was put into action and populations have since significantly recovered—even to the extent of possibly de-listing the eastern U.S. pelican populations.  In 1997, 4000 breeding pairs of brown pelicans on West Anacapa Island were recorded, from which an estimated 3000 chicks were expected to fledge.  For more information on brown pelicans, check out the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service website at http://species.fws.gov/bio_plcn.html.

Distribution: Brown pelicans breed in large colonies on the Channel Islands in Southern California, along the Baja peninsula, and in the Gulf of California, Mexico.  During summer and fall, birds disperse northward from their breeding grounds and can be seen diving for fish near the Oregon and Washington coast.
 
 
 
 
 

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