Brown pelican

With their broad wings and their long nozzle, the brown pelicans are unbalances with ground, largest Pélécaniforme S is of a rare elegance in the airs and of a frightening effectiveness when it plunges to fish in the seas which border the American continent. Their extensible provision bag is dyed of red and green at the time of the parade in love.

Food

On the offshore bars of the New World, the brown pelicans bran and play about paddle in the twilight. Balneal birds, they pass the essence of the day to fish each one them two kilos of fish daily newspaper. In escadrilles disordered, they are played of the wind currents then fall down a 30 m height on the benches of Sardine S and Anchois.

Reproduction

In November, at the season of the loves, the colonies of brown pelicans are agitated and each male tries to find partner. This one accepts its applicant only after one long gestural of very coded seduction. The coupling, often hard, is held on the site of the future nest which will be built by the female, the male providing materials necessary. After the birth, the parents ensure the subsistence of their offspring. Sometimes the small famished ones come to be nourished directly in the Sac gulaire of the pelican which brings to 3 to 6 kilos fish per day to them.

Being wary when they brood, the pelicans supervise with same vigilance their new-born babies that they keep close to the nest and with range to nozzle. It is only during the 11 weeks which precede the big departure by small that the parents protect the young people. Then, the latter are delivered to themselves.

Predation

In the airs, the pelican flies to the economy, letting plane its mass which can reach 14 kilos. Its piercing sight enables him to detect and choose its prey in a fish bench. The pelican transfers to melt on its objective. Correcting its trajectory slightly, it seems suspended in the sky before rocking and pricking, nozzle with the vertical. This spectacular technique is learned on the heap: the young pelicans which try themselves to fish start by taking severe logs by making dishes at water surface.

Convivial installation before the take-off

The young brown pelicans born in the year gather on the reefs: if they left the parental colony, they do not move away from there really. Because these extremely social birds, all confused age groups, move along the littoral, in search of places of fishing. Mixed young people and adults devote themselves then to their immutable aeronautical activities.

A balsam against the bites of salt

Passing half of its existence in sea water, a brown pelican must preserve its plumage of the burns of the sun and salt. Each day, between two meetings of diving, it smoothes its wings and with many distorsions épand on each one of its feathers a protective secretion which it collects of its nozzle on the Glande uropygienne, close to its tail.

Gallery

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