I present to you — Pelecanus erythrorhynchos! "Erythro" meaning red and "rhynchos" referring to the bill. In breeding plumage, you can see where this name comes from. A small group of about ten American White Pelicans were in Bodega Harbor today (28 April 2021). They nest at inland lakes and then return to the coast, so these are the first local arrivals after the breeding season (although this is early). Welcome back!
4 comments:
Jackie, have you seen them nesting? I would love to know where.
Sue
Beautiful birds! I saw a black-bellied plover in breeding plumage for the first time recently, on Ocean Beach. It's really amazing that nature puts so much energy into looking pretty (and "fit" of course), and that what's pretty for pelicans and plovers is also pretty to us.
Hi, Sue!
I have not seen white pelicans nesting. Although historically they nested more broadly, it's my understanding that currently they are using lakes in northeastern CA. For example, here's a short summary from a species account in California Bird Species of Special Concern:
"After the loss of colonies at Buena Vista Lake and the Salton Sea in the 1950s...California’s nesting pelicans have been confined mainly to the Klamath Basin...where they currently breed regularly only at Sheepy Lake, Lower Klamath NWR (since at least 1941), Siskiyou County, and Clear Lake NWR, Modoc County (since at least 1918; Shuford 2005). Since the 1950s, numbers of breeding pelicans in the Klamath Basin seem to have decreased and have varied considerably from year to year. Most nest counts have ranged at Clear Lake from 400 to 1600 and at Sheepy Lake from 200 to 700."
The original pdf with additional details and historic information can be found here:
https://nrm.dfg.ca.gov/FileHandler.ashx?DocumentID=10389&inline
I hope this helps!
Jackie
How exciting to see this post! We're used to seeing gray pelicans flying along the coast at Limantour and delighted in watching them mass in the estero, diving into the water to scoop up what must have been a wealth of fish!
But this past week was the first time I'd see white pelicans! They were at Ellis Creek water treatment ponds in Petaluma! I looked them up on the computer to find they were these American White Pelicans. I took some photos with my phone and posted them on the Sonoma County Facebook page, which drew a lot of comments from others who had not seen them in this area.
I hoped that they were nesting, so we could watch them for awhile, but on our next walk there, they were nowhere to be found. Perhaps they were just resting on their journey.
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