294 BULLETIN 121, UNITED STATES NATIONAL MUSEUM. 



PELECANUS OCCIDENTALIS OCCIDENTALIS Linnaeus. 



BROWN PELICAN. 

 HABITS. 



My first morning in Florida dawned clear, calm, and hot, a typical 

 April morning. The rich, varied whistle of the cardinal and the 

 striking song of the Florida wren attracted me outdoors to explore 

 my surroundings and make new acquaintances. An attractive path 

 led through a dense hammock of large, grotesque live oaks, festooned 

 with hanging mosses and a forest of heavily booted palmettos toward 

 the shore. I had hoped to enjoy the cool of the early morning hours, 

 but I had not then learned that the morning is the hottest part of 

 the day on the east coast, before the cool sea breeze of midday brings 

 relief. The heat was intense as I crossed a broad tract of saw pal- 

 mettos back of the beach, and I was glad to seek shelter under an 

 old bathhouse. The sea was smooth as glass and the horizon hardly 

 visible, but the ocean swell rose and fell on the white sand in a long 

 line of rolling breakers. Way off to the southward, in the shimmer- 

 ing heat which obstructed the shore line, I made out a long waving 

 line of black specks, a flock of large birds coming toward me ; they 

 were flying close to the water and just off the beach over the breakers ; 

 with slowly measured wing beats they came on in regular forma- 

 tion. They were pelicans, of course, for at regular intervals they all 

 set their wings and scaled along, barely skimming the tops of the 

 waves or sailing along the valleys between them. With grotesque 

 and quiet dignity they passed, and with the military precision of 

 well-drilled soldiers they alternately scaled or flapped their wings 

 in perfect unison, as if controlled by a common impulse. Before they 

 had disappeared to the northward another flock was in sight, and 

 so they came and passed on as long as I cared to watch them, with 

 one or more flocks constantly in sight. 



Nesting. — Whence they came and whither they were going we 

 learned a few days afterwards when we visited their breeding 

 grounds at Pelican Island, from which pelicans were constantly de- 

 parting for their fishing grounds up and down the east coast and 

 returning with food for their young. At the time of our visit, 

 April 16, 1902, the breeding season was at its height and the colony 

 was in flourishing condition. Pelican Island, long famous in the 

 annals of American ornithology, is a small triangular island of less 

 than 3 acres in extent, conveniently located in the quiet waters of 

 Indian River, the long narrow lagoon which separates the east coast 

 of Florida from the main land. Although not essentially different 

 from the many other small islands in the same region, it has been 

 occupied practically continuously since the earliest records we have 



