WATER BIRDS. 69 
1903 (Barrows); one killed at Dorr, Allegan county, September 1892 
(O. & O. XVII, 143); one killed at Tecumseh, Lenawee county in 1882 
(L. W. Watkins); one specimen in Agricultural College Museum without 
data, perhaps the specimen recorded by Cook (page 31) as from Berrien 
county; two killed in Hillsdale county and mounted for a storekeeper 
at Hillsdale (Hankinson); two shot in St. Joseph county and now in the 
collection of Adolph Beerstecker (Gibbs, list of 1879); one killed near 
Port Huron about September 26, 1877 (F. & S.); one seen and shot at on 
Keweenaw Point ‘‘a few years since” (Kneeland, 1856-57); two shot 
October 31, 1905, by Ira J. Boughton, on Indian Lake, near Pentoga, 
Iron county. 
The nest is bulky and placed on the ground, being “only a heap of earth 
and gravel raked into a pile about six or eight inches high and about twenty 
inches broad on the top, which is only very slightly hollowed” (Ridgway). 
The eggs are two or three, white chalky, and more or less stained. They 
average 3.34 by 2.22 inches. The period of incubation is stated by Bendire 
to be about twenty-nine days; at least that was all the time taken by a 
hen to hatch pelican eggs placed under her. 
TECHNICAL DESCRIPTION. 
The largest of our water birds except the swans, and recognizable by its black and white 
plumage, its huge bill, a foot or more long, with its great pouch of elastic skin below. The 
sexes are alike in color, mainly pure white; the flight feathers (primaries and most of second- 
aries) jet-black; bill and pouch reddish; feet red in summer, yellow in winter. In breeding 
plumage there is a drooping crest of white or pale yellow feathers from the back of the 
head, the chest and lesser wing coverts are pale yellow, and there is a bony wart-like knob 
or ridge near the middle of the upper mandible. This knob and the occipital crest are shed 
after the breeding season. Young birds lack the black wing feathers, but have a little 
brown or gray in the wings and on the head; otherwise they are white. 
Langa adult, 44 to 6 feet; spread of wings, 8 to 10 feet; wing, about 2 feet; bill 12 
to 15 inches. 
29. Brown Pelican. Pelecanus occidentalis Linn. (126) 
Synonyms: Common Pelican (of Florida).—Pelecanus onocrotalus occidentalis, Linn., 
1766.—Pelecanus fuscus, of most authors. 
Readily distinguished from the White Pelican by the prevailing colors, 
the naked lower mandible, and 22 tail feathers instead of 24. 
Distribution.—Atlantic coast of tropical and subtropical America, 
north on the Atlantic coast to North Carolina; accidental in Illinois and 
Michigan. 
According to Dr. Morris Gibbs of Kalamazoo, the late W. H. Collins 
of Detroit wrote him ‘“‘A specimen taken near Romeo, Michigan in the 
spring of 1882.’ Probably this record was considered too doubtful for 
insertion in Cook’s “Birds of Michigan,” but we are able now to add two 
more records which establish the species as a very rare visitor to the state. 
Dr. J. W. Velie of St. Joseph, Michigan states that “an adult in good 
plumage was shot at St. Joseph, Michigan, June 7, 1904, and was brought 
to me in the flesh; I examined, measured, and fully identified it. I have 
seen thousands of these birds alive, and have shot and skinned numerous 
specimens in Florida, and there is no possibility of a mistake in this identi- 
fication. It was not a bird which had escaped from some zoological garden, 
or at least it showed no signs whatever of recent confinement. The gunners 
who killed it refused to sell, but took it away and I have been unable to 
trace the specimen.”’ Dr. Velie also states that “On September 8, 1904, 
