Pelicans display great sagacity when fishing, a flock often combining to form a horseshoe, and, driving the fish into a mass, take their fill. This method, of course, is only possible when fishing in the estuaries of rivers or lakes, where the fish can be "rounded up," so to speak. Clumsy as the pelican looks, it is yet capable of wonderful powers of flight; indeed, it shares the honour with the vultures, storks, and adjutants as an expert in the peculiar form of flight known as "soaring."
A North American species of pelican is remarkable in that during the breeding-season the beak is ornamented with a peculiar horny excrescence, which is shed as soon as that period is over.
Photo by D. Le Souef] [Melbourne.
YOUNG AUSTRALIAN PELICAN.
Pelicans, like gannets and cormorants, are hatched perfectly naked and quite blind.
Pelicans are natives of the tropical and temperate regions of the Old and New Worlds, and live in flocks often numbering many thousands. The nest is placed on the ground, and therein are deposited two white eggs. The young are helpless for some time after hatching.
In all some six-and-thirty species of Cormorants are known to science, of which two are commonly to be met with round the British coasts, one of which also travels inland to establish itself on such lakes and rivers as may afford it support.
In various parts of the world cormorants are taken when young and trained to catch fish: sometimes for sport, or—as in China—to furnish a livelihood for their owners. At one time the Master of the Cormorants was one of the officers in the Royal Household of England, the post having been created in 1611 by James I. The method of hunting is as follows:—After fastening a ring around the neck, the bird is cast off into the water, and, diving immediately, makes its way beneath the surface with incredible speed, and, seizing one fish after another, rises in a short space of time with its mouth full and throat distended by the fish, which it has been unable to swallow by reason of the restraining ring. With these captures it dutifully returns to its keeper, who deftly removes the fish, and either returns the bird to the water, or, giving it a share of the spoil, restores it to its perch.
Cormorants nest either in trees or on the ground; they lay from four to six eggs, and the young feed themselves by thrusting their heads far down the parents' throats and helping themselves to the half-digested fish which they find there.