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THE BROWN PELICAN. 



Pelecanus fuscus, Linn. 



PLATE CCLI. Male. 



The Brown Pelican, which is one of the most interesting of our Ame- 

 rican birds, is a constant resident in the Floridas, where it resorts to the 

 Keys and the salt-water inlets, but never enters fresh-water streams, as the 

 White Pelican is wont to do. It is rarely seen farther eastward than 

 Cape Hatteras, but is found to the south far beyond the limits of the 

 United States. Within the recollection of persons still living, its num- 

 bers have been considerably reduced, so much indeed that in the inner Bay 

 of Charleston, where twenty or thirty years ago it was quite abundant, 

 very few individuals are now seen, and these chiefly during a continuance 

 of tempestuous weather. There is a naked bar, a few miles distant from 

 the main land, between Charleston and the mouth of the Santee, on which 

 my friend John Bachman some years ago saw a great number of these' 

 birds, of which he procured several ; but at the present day, few are 

 known to breed farther east than the salt-water inlets running parallel to 

 the coast of Florida, forty or fifty miles south of St Augustine, where I 

 for the first time met with this Pelican in considerable numbers. 



My friend John Bullow, Esq. took me in his barge to visit the Ha- 

 lifax, which is a large inlet, and on which we soon reached an island 

 where the Brown Pelicans had bred for a number of years, but where, to 

 my great disappointment, none were then to be seen. The next morning, 

 being ten or twelve miles farther down the stream, we entered another in. 

 let, where I saw several dozens of these birds perched on the mangroves, 

 and apparently sound asleep. I shot at them from a very short distance, 

 and with my first barrel brought two to the water, but although many of 

 them still remained looking at us, I could not send the contents of my 

 second barrel to them, as the shot had unluckily been introduced into it 

 before the powder. They all flew off" one after another, and still worse, 

 as the servants approached those which had fallen upon the water, they 

 also flew away. 



On arriving at the Keys of Florida, on board the Marion Revenue 

 Cutter, I found the Pelicans pretty numerous. They became more abun- 



