150 WESTERN SERIES OP READERS. 



her own breast. This story is as true as legends 

 usually are; and you should always take a legend 

 with a pinch of salt. The truth is, the pelican 

 presses the food up out of her own full crop 

 with the tip of her great beak. At times a peli- 

 can's beak is tipped with red, so that a person 

 looking from a distance would think it a drop of 

 blood. 



It looks as though a pelican would meet with 

 some difficulty in preening and cleaning itself 

 with such a great, ungainly beak as it has to work 

 with. But a pelican knows very well how to use 

 its feet to reach those parts the beak is unable to 

 meet. Imagine a pelican trying to preen the back 

 of its neck with its bill as other birds do. What 

 a droll sight! 



When pelican is annoyed, it is said to have an 

 original way of opening its beak wide and slap- 

 ping it together. This makes a great noise, and 

 may well scare anybody who is easily frightened. 

 The pouch collapses when the beak suddenly 

 shuts, with a loud report, as when a paper bag is 

 blown out and then punched. 



When a pelican has remained long standing in 

 the edge of the water, and feels cold and tired, it 

 has a way of walking up on shore, standing 

 straight like a man, and napping its wings as a 



