The Brown Pelican 67 



entire diet of the pelican seems to be of menhaden, a small 

 bony sardine, that is used as fertilizer in the east. If the fish 

 is of no more use to man than that, we surely could not be- 

 grudge this fine bird the few that he needs to satisfy his 

 daily wants. 



We took the youngsters and made them disgorge into our 

 buckets, and we collected sundry specimens that were depos- 

 ited on our shores as we trod among the fuzzy little fellows, 

 but our data was always the same, just menhaden. And al- 

 though we traveled clear to the Texas coast, stopping at all 

 likely places, the answer was always the same. We preserved 

 the stomachs of the birds in formaldehyde, and sent them on 

 to Washington, while the skins were saved for the large Hab- 

 itat Group being prepared for the State Museum. 



The pelican is an easy-going, unsuspicious sort of fellow, 

 and they paid no attention tO' my little blind, but came circling 

 in and alighted before I had scarcely concealed myself. They 

 are rough with the babies, and cuff and peck them unmerci- 

 fully until the youngster finally succeeds in crawling under 

 the crouching parent, and is so protected from the hot sun. I 

 marvelled at the way the young feed, downy fellows almost 

 as big as an old one, and actually weighing more, beg their 

 food the minute the mother bird appears. They beg with a 

 great fluttering of wings, and run their bills down the older 

 bird's throat, until it seems they are trying to crawl inside. 

 And all the time they carry on with little complaining notes, 

 and hunch forward, in exactly the same way a calf does when 

 he gets too eager for his dinner. They are quarrelsome too. 

 and a couple of them started a tussling match, and rolled into 

 Mr. Arthur's blind, and indeed, that was the difficulty in 

 taking motion pictures, the birds came in too close. One fel- 

 low tried to let the tent rope down, and another, attracted 

 probably by the reflection of the lens, stuck his head into 

 the blind to see what it was all about. 



The nests of the pelicans vary a great deal on the different 

 islands. On Errol we found the nests built rather high, and a few 

 of them in bushes as much as four feet off the ground, bulky. 



