CHAPTER 9 



THE PELICANS 



ALTHOUGH DIFFERING outwardly from each other much in form, 

 size and habits, the fish-eating peHcans comprise a natural order 

 {Pelecaniformes) , ranging over all seas and zones, which is quite distinct 

 from other sea-bird orders. They are powerful swimmers and divers, 

 having all four toes directed forwards and connected by strong webs. 

 The inner edge of the third toe is pectinated, forming a tooth-comb 

 which is used for scratching the plumage for lice and other parasites. 

 In temperate and sub-arctic latitudes of the North Atlantic the gannet 

 and the cormorants (including the shag) are the familiar representatives. 

 The pelicans, darters, boobies, frigate- and tropic-birds are confined 

 principally to the tropics. 



The powers of flight vary: the cormorants, birds which spend 

 more time resting on land than swimming or flying, and migrate little, 

 are rather slow and laboured in flight, while the more pelagic gannet 

 is fast and powerful. The frigate- and tropic-birds can sustain an 

 apparently effortless aerial manoeuvring that is nearest perfection. 

 This air mastery, and the great assemblies at the breeding cliflfs and 

 islands, make the pelican tribe the most spectacular among sea-birds. 

 It has been estimated that 100,000 brown pelicans are in sight at once 

 on the guano islands off* the coast of Peru. On San Martin Island, 

 California, about 350,000 nests of the double-crested cormorant were 

 estimated by H. W. Wright (191 3). In North Atlantic waters, e.g. 

 Bonaventure in the Gulf of St. Lawrence, Eldey near Iceland, St. 

 Kilda in Scotland, Little Skellig in Ireland, and Grassholm in Wales, 

 thousands of white-plumaged gannets are in the air together, perform- 

 ing a magnificent revolving circle above their densely packed nesting 

 rock. 



Although the pelican tribe are all, more or less, colonial nesters, 

 they are not always sociable away from the breeding colony, with the 

 exception of the true pelicans. They are more often seen at sea singly 



