288 BULLETIN 121, UNITED STATES NATIONAL MUSEUM. 



ing. A young bird in my collection, with a body about the size of a 

 mallard and a head as large as a swan, has the head and neck prac- 

 tically naked, the down only just starting, and the body thickly 

 covered Avith soft, dense fleece-like down which is pure white. This 

 bird was probably two or three weeks old. The soft woolly down 

 increases until the young bird is completely covered; the flight 

 feathers develop rapidly and the bird attains its full size before the 

 body plumage appears. The first winter plumage is acquired in the 

 fall when the young birds closely resemble the adults. Young birds 

 may be distinguished from adults in the spring by the absence of the 

 special adornments of the nuptial season, the heads and breasts are 

 pure white and the bills and feet are duller colored. At the first 

 postnuptial molt old and young become practically indistinguish- 

 able, except that the highest development of maturity is not reached 

 until the third or fourth year. In adults the prenuptial molt is 

 incomplete, producing in highly plumaged birds, the pale yellow 

 crest and breast plumes, the brilliant orange bill and feet and the 

 horny protuberance on the bill, which is common to both sexes. The 

 horn is shed soon after the eggs are laid and the occipital crest is 

 soon rei^laced by a mottled gray cap. I believe that only a few of 

 the oldest and most highly developed birds have well-marked yellow 

 crests and plumes; the greater number of breeding birds have the 

 gray caps, which are lost at the end of the breeding season, or at 

 the following postnuptial molt. 



Food. — The white pelican does not dive for its food like the brown 

 pelican, but catches it on or near the surface by swimming or wading 

 in shallow water. The process has been well described by several 

 writers, but the following account by Mr. N. S. Goss (1888) seems 

 to give the best idea of it : 



I have often noticed the birds in flocks, in pairs, or alone, swimming on 

 the water with partially opened wings, and head drawn down and back, the 

 bill just clearing the water, ready to strike and gobble up the prey within 

 their reach ; when so fishing, if they ran into a shoal of minnows, they would 

 stretch out their necks, drop their heads upon the water, and with open 

 mouths and extended pouches scoop up the tiny fry. Their favorite time for 

 fishing on the seashore is during the incoming tide, as with it come the small 

 fishes to feed upon the insects caught in the rise, and upon the low forms 

 of life in the drift as it washes shoreward, the larger fish following in their 

 wake, each from the smallest to the largest eagerly engaged in taking life in 

 order to sustain life. All sea birds know this and the time of its coming well, 

 and the white pelicans that have been patiently waiting in line along the 

 beach, quietly move into the water, and glide smoothly out, so as not to 

 frighten the life beneath, and at a suitable distance from the shore, form into 

 a line in accordance with the sinuosities of the beach, each facing shoi-eward 

 and awaiting their leader's signal to start. When this is given, all is com- 

 motion ; the birds rapidly striking the water with their wings, throwing it 

 high above them, and plunging their heads in and out, fairly make the water 



