Sweet-voiced, valiant on the swaying bough,
Alert, elate,
Dodging the fitful spits of snow,
New England’s poet-laureate
Telling us Spring has come again!
—Thomas Bailey Aldrich, “Spring in New England.”
THE AMERICAN WHITE PELICAN.
(Pelecanus erythrorhynchos.)
In the year 1758 the naturalist Linnaeus gave to the birds called Pelicans the generic name Pelecanus. In this genus he also placed the cormorants and the gannets. These with the snake-birds, the frigate-birds and the tropic-birds were for a long time grouped together under the family name Pelecanidae. This name, however, is now restricted to the various species of the Pelicans which are included in a single genus.
The generic name Pelecanus and the common name Pelican are derived from pelekan, the Greek name for these birds. They were well known to the ancients by whom they were called Ornacrotalus. There is a legend of great antiquity for which there is no foundation in fact, which states that the pelican feeds to her young blood drawn from her own breast, in which she herself has made the incision.
There are about ten species of pelicans distributed throughout the world, mostly confined to those countries having warm climates. Two or three species, however, extend their range into the colder regions during the summer months. Three of the species inhabit North America and two of these are seldom seen except on the sea coasts; the brown pelican (Pelecanus fuscus) on the Atlantic coast and the California brown pelican (Pelecanus californicus) on the Pacific coast. The other species is the bird of our illustration, and is common in the interior as well as on the seaboard of California.