THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Wednesday, November 2, 1994 TAG: 9411020443
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: GUY FRIDDELL
LENGTH: Medium: 59 lines
A lone white pelican, among the largest birds in the United States, is hanging around Lynnhaven Inlet, Bob Ake disclosed Tuesday.
Usually in the autumn the gentle giants are on their way to Florida and the Gulf Shore from their breeding grounds on islands amid lakes in the Northwest and Canada.
It was of his kind that Dixon Lanier Merritt wrote in 1910:
A wonderful bird is the pelican.
His bill will hold more than his belican.
He can take in his beak food enough for a week,
But I'm damned if I see how the helican.
You may wonder how I know the vagrant pelican is a male. Simply because no female would be so dense as to get that far off course.
When a flock of pelicans takes off against the blue sky, a white cloud rising, it is one of nature's great spectacles, Ake noted. The brown pelican appears arrayed in brown, gold and white silks.
Both kinds of pelicans nearly died out under the impact of DDT, widely used after World War II. But after the government banned that lethal spray in the mid-1970s, the pelicans began a comeback.
Now brown pelicans cruise along the Virginia-North Carolina coast, flying in long lines on the horizon. They have taken to nesting on Virginia's Eastern Shore. (Other pesticides still in use are fully as devastating as DDT, but a species has to be near extinction before the government wakes up.)
The white pelican is 4 to 5 feet in length with a wingspan of 9 feet. The brown pelican is 3 1/2 to 4 1/2 feet with a wingspan of 7 feet.
But the brown pelican is the more dramatic in catching fish, diving from upwards of 50 feet. The white pelican is a tipper like mallards and other puddle ducks, tipping over, bottoms up, to thrust its head under the water.
Male and female pelicans take turns sitting on the nest and feeding the young by regurgitating food. Pelicans, which have been around longer than man, were ahead of many men in sharing the duties of rearing the young.
The arrival of the lone white pelican is a reminder of other migrating species moving through Hampton Roads and pleasure derived from feeding them.
This year's annual birdseed sale, a trifle late so as to offer just-harvested seed, will be held Saturday at the Princess Anne Farmers Service in Norfolk on Virginia Beach Boulevard just west of Military Highway.
A new item is suet cakes. Placed in wire or mesh holders, they are handy for affixing to a tree or a passing stranger of tractable nature.
Also available are black oil sunflower seed, a universal favorite; striped sunflower seed; a gourmet wild bird mix; and black thistle seed, attractive to finches.
The Cape Henry Audubon Society backs the sale. Profits help fund operations of the eight-acre Weyanoke Sanctuary in Norfolk's West Ghent. ILLUSTRATION: Color photo
AUDUBON SOCIETY
The graceful white pelican.
by CNB