Xov.,1917 



BIRDS OF MOLLY ISLAND, YELLOWSTONE NATIONAL PARK 



181 



When newly hatched, pelicans are helpless little creatures, naked, blind, 

 and too weak even to move about in the hollow that is their home. In two 

 weeks their ruddy little bodies have become more or less covered with white 

 down, and they are able to move about. The parents are devoted to the nest- 

 lings, shielding them from the hot sun, feeding them on regurgitated fish, and 

 leaving them with extreme reluctance. But later, the parents leave when one 

 comes within three hundred yards, and crowd toward the far side of the island. 

 Then, on still closer approach, all take wing, the nesting birds flying only a few 

 hundred feet before alighting on the water, the non-breeding birds (usually a 

 hundred or more) departing to distant parts of the lake. If the young are 

 large enough to walk, they follow the older birds to the edge of the island and 

 swim out to the parents. After the intruder leaves, the birds return to their 



Fig. 56. Drove of young White Pelicans, on Yellowstone Lake 



homes. How the parents ever distinguish their own youngsters is a mystery to 

 me, but I have seen an old bird return with fish and refuse to open his bill to 

 youngster after youngster until he came to his own. Then he would open his 

 pouch wide and the little fellow would thrust in his head and neck until he 

 threatened to disappear entirely, and prod around for his fish. Usually only 

 one bird at a time is fed. Possibly only one bird in a brood reaches maturity, 

 for I have often noted a great discrepancy between the numbers of eggs laid 

 and the young birds maturing. One season I counted over five hundred eggs, 

 yet there were only one hundred and seventy young to be found in mid- August. 

 What became of the others I could not tell, but I have never found any dead 

 pelicans of any age except those killed on the mainland by coyotes, and a few 

 3^oung birds killed by exposure to the sun. Perhaps the gulls have developed 



