Pelicanidæ.
A comprehensive group of aquatic birds presenting a uniformity of structure quite apparent in the skeleton, and especially in the digestive organs, of which the Pelican is the type. They are mostly birds of large size, but of slender, elongated body, long neck, and head generally of moderate size. The bill is long, sometimes slender, at other times rather stout and straight; the upper mandible with the ridge separated by grooves, and terminated in a narrow, decurved, and pointed nail, or claw; the lower mandible elastic and extensible. The plumage is soft and blending, on the back and wings compact and imbricated; wings long, tail of moderate length and narrow.
The habits of the group vary considerably. Cormorants pursue their prey much in the same manner as Mergansers and Loons; the Anhingas are strictly territorial; the Pelicans combine the habits of both. The Gannets fly about in quest of food, plunging upon it from on high. The Frigate Birds range over the seas with unrivalled power of flight, and the Tropic Birds resemble in progression the Terns. The family comprises—
1. Pelicans. 2. Cormorants. 3. Gannets. 4. Phaetons. 5. Anhingas.
The Pelican ([Fig. 105]) has the bill long, straight, rather broad, and very much depressed; upper mandible flattened, terminating in a hooked tip much bent and compressed; lower mandible formed of two bony branches united at the point, from which a membranous naked skin is suspended, forming a purse, which can be distended into a voluminous bag. The Pelicans are large, heavy aquatic birds, with great extent of wing, and are excellent swimmers; their haunts are estuaries, the sea-coast, and the banks of rivers, lakes, and marshes. In its habitat, whenever a fish betrays its presence by leaping or flashing its glittering scales in the sun, the Pelican will be seen sailing towards it.
This bird has an appetite so insatiable, and a stomach so capacious, that, in one day's fishing, it devours as much fish as would satisfy six men. The Egyptians have nicknamed it the "River Camel," because it can imbibe at once more than twenty pints of water. Certainly it only makes two meals a day; but, oh! what meals they are!
Fig. 105.—The Crested Pelican (P. onocrotalus, var. Orientalis, Linn.).
Pelicans often travel in considerable flocks, visiting the mouths of rivers or favourite retreats on the sea-coast. When they have made choice of a suitable place, they arrange themselves in a wide circle, and begin to beat the water with extended wing, so as to drive the fish before them, gradually diminishing the circle as they approach the shore or some inlet on the coast. In this manner they get all the fish together into a small space, when the common feast begins. After gorging themselves they retire to the shore, where the processes of digestion follow. Some rest with the neck over the back; others busily dress and smooth their plumage, waiting patiently until returning appetite invites all to fresh exertions. When thus quiescent, occasionally one of these birds empties his well-lined pouch, and spreads in front of him all the fish that it contains, in order to feed upon them at leisure.
This guttural pouch, which plays so important a part in the Pelican's life, is composed of two skins, the outer one being a prolongation of the skin of the neck; the inner one is contiguous to the coating of the œsophagus. The tongue is small: a delicate gizzard forms one large sac with the other stomachs.
In spite of its great size, the Pelican flies easily and to considerable distances. It is no diver, but will occasionally dash down on fish from a considerable height, and with such velocity that it becomes submerged; but its buoyancy instantly brings it to the surface again. It perches on trees, but seems to prefer rocks. When it builds a nest, it is generally formed of coarse reedy grass, lined with softer material, placed in the cleft of dry rocks near the water. Here the female deposits two, three, four, sometimes five white eggs, but most frequently only two. They are occasionally satisfied with placing their eggs in an indentation in the ground which they have roughly lined with blades of grass.
After an incubation lasting from forty to forty-five days, the young ones, covered with a greyish down, are hatched. The female feeds them: she presses the hooked red point of the mandible against her breast, which causes her to disgorge the fish it contains into the bills of the young ones, the male performing the same operation on himself for the benefit of his partner. This is probably the fact that has given origin to the absurd fable that the female Pelican is in the habit of piercing her breast in order to nourish her young with her maternal blood. The young birds are easily tamed. It is even asserted that they are susceptible of education, and that, like the young Cormorants, they can be taught to fish for their masters.
The Pelican is more common in tropical regions than in temperate climates. They are very numerous in Africa, Siam, Madagascar, the Sunda Isles, the Philippines, Manilla, and in the Western Hemisphere they abound from the Antilles to the northern temperate part of the South American continent. The true Pelicans are large birds with powerful wings, and are excellent swimmers. The pouch has extraordinary elasticity, and is capable of containing a number of fish either for its own consumption or the nourishment of its young. It haunts the neighbourhood of rivers and lakes and the sea-coast, being rarely seen more than twenty leagues from the land. Levaillant describes one of those wonderful ornithological scenes which only occur in uninhabited regions. At the entrance of Saldanha Bay, on the south-west coast of Africa, after wading through the surf and clambering up the rocks, "all of a sudden there arose from the surface of the Island of Dassen-Eyland an impenetrable cloud, which formed, at the distance of forty feet above our heads, an immense canopy, composed of birds of almost every kind of water-fowl—Cormorants, Sea Gulls, Sea Swallows, Pelicans, and I believe the whole winged tribes of this part of Africa were here assembled. Their voices, harsh and discordant, formed a noise so unmusical that I was every moment compelled to cover my head in order to relieve my ears. The alarm we created was so much the more general, inasmuch as the birds disturbed were chiefly sitting females. They had nests, eggs, and young to defend." In this scene the Pelican, from its peculiar appearance, was of course a prominent object. The best-known species are—1, the White Pelican; 2, the Crested Pelican; 3, the Brown Pelican; and 4, the Spectacled Pelican.