"These men mentioned the brown 

 pelican as coming as far north as the Outer 

 Banks, but never did they say they had 

 seen or heard of a nesting site here," he 

 says. 



The earliest known nesting site for 

 pelicans in North Carolina was discovered 

 in 1929 near Ocracoke. Over the next 50 

 years, nests were few and only about 100 

 pairs of mating pelicans were counted in 

 the state. 



Then, in the early 1980s, pelicans 

 moved into North Carolina with a passion. 

 They began nesting in the Cape Fear area 

 around 1981. More and more people 

 reported seeing these large birds feeding 

 on schools of small fish. 



Over the next ten years, pelicans 

 moved northward at a rapid clip. At last 

 count, more than 4,000 nests were 

 recorded along Tar Heel shores. This 

 strictly Southern bird has broken its own 

 traditions and has nested recently in the 

 Chesapeake Bay area and along 

 Maryland's Eastern Shore. 



Why the sudden comeback? Is it a 

 comeback at all? 



"Well, that's a good question," Parnell 

 says. "Because we don't really know if the 

 brown pelican ever nested all that much in 



COASTWATCH 11 



North Carolina until recent years. We don't 

 have records that go very far back." 



But one thing is certain, he adds. 

 "We've got plenty of them now." 



The hope of increased populations of 

 pelicans led several dedicated scientists to 

 begin banding and counting activities in 

 the early 1980s. One of these was John 

 Weske, a Maryland ornithologist. 



"i would say 

 we've g01 pelicans 

 coming out oe our ears." 



James Parnell 

 ■ ■ ■ ■ 



In Jan DeBlieu's book, Hatteras 

 Journal, she describes an outing with 

 Weske during which more than 90 pelican 

 chicks were banded and counted on a 

 dredge-material island at Oregon Inlet, 

 then the northernmost pelican colony in 

 the state. 



"Suddenly, a convoy of adult pelicans 

 lifted quietly from the center of the island," 

 she writes. "By the time I reached the edge 

 of the colony, Weske had conducted a 



quick survey of the site, and the chicks 

 had set up a clamor of throaty, tremulous 

 calls that sounded something like the 

 scared whinnies of horses. They certainly 

 did not sound much like birds." 



DeBlieu described the nesting site as 

 a clearing littered with "thick brown reed 

 stems, dry and crunchy underfoot." On 

 small mounds of rotting twigs sat several 

 small chicks, those left behind when the 

 older hatchlings shot into the reeds. 



"I moved tentatively after them as the 

 birds screamed louder and scrambled to 

 find an escape," she says. "A long-armed 

 boy reached for one of the fleeing chicks 

 and closed his fingers around its yellow 

 snapping bill. Pinning its wings together 

 just above the crook, he handed the chick 

 to me and reached for another. I grasped 

 the bird's wings at the base and lifted, 

 surprised when its body went limp and its 

 legs dangled below." 



This process was repeated until 

 Weske and his associates had banded 92 

 chicks. Meanwhile, DeBlieu says, the adult 

 pelicans remained overhead, circling 

 round and round, "sprinkling us with 

 bursts of waste." 



C N I I N U E D 



