Scientists say pelicans can be fearsome mascot
When the New Orleans Hornets announced they were changing their name to the Pelicans late last month, there was some collective grumbling about the supposedly less-than-fearsome choice.
But pelicans, in addition to being a long-serving symbol of Louisiana, are more than meets the eye. When the New Orleans basketball team adopts its new logo for the 2013-14 season, it will be taking on the moniker of a fierce coastal hunting bird.
Mike Carloss, biologist director of Coastal and Non-Game Resources at the Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries, has spent decades working with the state's brown pelican population.
Even he at first was skeptical of the pelican's potential as a professional sports mascot, “and I'm partial to pelicans,” he said.
But the more he thought about it, the more potential he realized the pelican holds.
“They're graceful, elegant and very resilient,” Carloss said. “They're tough birds. They've come back from all these disasters. Fifty years ago, you couldn't even find a pelican in the state. They've gone from nothing to many thousands of birds.”
Not only inspiring, the birds are more fearsome than many people think, scientists argue.
“These birds really are athletes,” said Melanie Driscoll, Audubon's director of bird conservation for the Gulf of Mexico and Mississippi Flyway. “They've got speed, endurance and a lot of fight in them.”
Many people only see pelicans at rest, whether sitting on a piling or floating lazily atop the waves, Driscoll said.
“I can understand why pelicans might seem gangly and goofy sometimes, but the predatory nature is strong in them,” Driscoll said. “Ask a fisherman that's been hassled by a pelican.”
Pelicans are actually very graceful and strong birds, said Delaina LeBlanc, migratory bird coordinator with the Barataria-Terrebonne National Estuary Program.
“They may seem wimpy unless you're a menhaden,” Driscoll said of the brown pelican's favorite meal.
Brown pelicans feed by punch diving. The brown pelican uses its keen eyesight to locate fish in the water from high in the air, then dives straight down, breaking the surface with its breastbone and using the large pouch on its bill as a dip net to catch one or more fish at a time. Pelicans can make this dive from a height of 70 feet.
“And they don't even have their dinner at that point,” Driscoll said. “They're followed by other birds that want to steal their fish.”
The pelican must play defense, she said. They fly, duck under the water and swim away swiftly to evade the gulls and keep them away from their meal. A pelican eats up to 4 pounds of fish a day. Brown pelicans may fly up to 60-70 miles a day to get their food.
“There's a lot of strategy, defense and fish-handling skills going on,” Driscoll added.
Just as basketball players do, pelicans play both aggressive offense and defense to earn their meals.
“But in the game of basketball, it's for sport,” said Audubon Louisiana Executive Director Doug Meffert. “For the pelican, it's life or death.”
Pelicans are colonial birds, working as a team as they hunt, nest and raise their young.
White pelicans are migratory and travel thousands of miles each year between Canada and the Gulf Coast. The pelicans, which often hunt in inland lakes, work together in a kind of “coordinated play” to drive fish into shallower waters to feed, Driscoll said.
White pelicans have also been known to steal fish from other animals. In Texas, there have been reports of them waiting for neighboring cormorants — long, slender diving birds — to bring up a fish. The white pelicans will then chomp their massive beaks around the heads and necks of the cormorants and shake them until they release their catch.
“Because people initially don't think of the pelican as a fierce bird like a hawk or a raptor, they're fooled because they think it's so harmless,” LeBlanc said.
Though seemingly abundant in the Gulf, the brown pelican only came off the federal Endangered Species List in 2009. And the bird's population was wiped off the map in Louisiana 50 years ago.
“It's a resilient bird,” LeBlanc said. “This is a bird that was no longer here and then reintroduced. It's a comeback kid.”
The pelican population began a steep decline in Louisiana in the 1950s because of widespread use of the chemical pesticide DDT. The pesticide entered the bodies of many pelicans through fish and other food sources. The chemical caused pelicans to lay brittle eggs that broke under the weight of nesting mothers.
By 1961, the birds stopped nesting in the state and disappeared completely by 1963. Banning DDT and related chemicals in 1972 gave pelicans the boost they needed to recover.
Louisiana officials would not accept the loss of their state bird and sought to rebuild the population, bringing in 1,276 pelicans from Florida between 1968 and 1980. Today there are as many as 10,000 breeding pairs in the state.
“I think about how New Orleanians have rallied around their sports teams as a symbol of resilience,” Meffert said. “The pelican demonstrates that kind of resilience. People who aren't birders are proud of our Louisiana pelican.”
The pelican still faces environmental obstacles. The bird prefers to breed on the state's small barrier islands, which are disappearing because of coastal erosion. The 2010 oil spill also had a devastating effect on pelicans and other birds, oiling and sickening or killing them and damaging their nesting grounds. But the pelican populations remain strong.
“New Orleans is teetering on the edge of the Gulf,” Carloss said. “They symbolize a lot of what coastal Louisiana is about — that need to rebuild and sustain what we have.”