Pelican, you can too!

I don't think the Brown Pelican is ugly, I think they're cute with their fuzzy heads and beady eyes. That's a weird word "PELICAN". Say it... PELICAN. Who made that up? Why didn't they call it Pouchican, or Beadican?

There are 8 species of Pelicans, a bird that's been around almost 30 million years. Million! It survived the Big Blast. No wonder if looks like a dinosaur.  Some Pelicans are very pretty, them I haven't seen. The Brown Pelican is sort of the throwback to his ancestry and the only dark Pelican. Down and dirty with a face only his Momican could love. And me. He's the smallest of all pelicans which says a lot because they're pretty big birds. Males and females look the same. Young pelicans are all brown.

The Brown Pelican has a disproportionately long gray bill with a large pouch of skin. Its pouch holds two or three times more than its stomach can hold -- close to three gallons of fish and water. Sounds like me and my mouth sometimes, but with chocolate, not fish.

The female lays two to three eggs . Both parents incubate the eggs and take care of the beautiful pelican babies, thus pelicans make great husbands. To incubate their eggs, the pelican will put its webbed feet over the eggs to keep them warm. AWWWW.
The chicks hatch after about a month. For the first 10 days after hatching, the parents will leave regurgitated food on the bottom of the nest for the chicks to eat. 

Yum.

 After that, the chicks eat regurgitated food directly from their parents' bills.

The Brown Pelican is the only species of of pelican that dives in the water to get food. It uses its bill and pouch like a net. It scoops up fish and water, strains out the water from the sides of its bill, tips back its head and swallows the fish it caught. Like a sieve. It doesn't carry fish in its pouch, it only uses the pouch as a scooper.

After it eats a fish it gives a little tale wiggle, that way we know his dive was a success.

 

(¯`v´¯)
.`·.¸.·´ ¸.·´¸.·´¨) ¸.·*¨)(¸.·´ (¸.·´ .·´ ¸  I love PELICANS!

A wonderful bird is a pelican,
His bill will hold more than his belican.
He can take in his beak
Food enough for a week;
But I'm damned if I see how the helican.

"The Pelican"  by Dixon Lanier Merritt (1879 – 1972)
often attributed to Ogden Nash (1902-1971)