THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Tuesday, July 23, 1996 TAG: 9607230248
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B1 EDITION: NORTH CAROLINA
SOURCE: BY CATHERINE KOZAK, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: OREGON INLET LENGTH: 93 lines
The young brown pelican lurched out of the grassy marshes, staggered several steps and fell unceremoniously on its chest. Brothers and sisters who had plunged into twisted branches and sea myrtle struggled to escape.
Men and women encircled the awkward, turkey-sized birds, too young to fly, too clumsy to run. One man grabbed a bird by its long beak, folded its wings together and picked it up. He thrust its right leg to another man, who with long-neck pliers gently squeezed a small aluminum band in place.
``We'd never done anything like this before,'' said Carol Lofland, a Colington Harbour resident who with her husband, Fred, volunteered to help band one of the favorite birds of the Outer Banks.
``I wouldn't have missed it for anything in the world. . . seeing the birds in their natural setting. This is completely different.''
More than 20 volunteers gathered soon after dawn Monday on an isolated island created out of dredged mud in the Pamlico Sound to help Micou Browne and John S. Weske band 1,190 immature pelicans. The bands - the size of a wide wedding band - will help keep closer tabs on the species that recovered from near-extinction 20 years ago.
It's important to make sure the bands are closed well, Weske told the volunteers standing among clumps of sea grasses as they prepared to start banding.
``They're a big bird - they look pretty fierce, but they're not bad to handle.''
But with one sharp tooth situated toward the front of the roof of its mouth, a pelican is an effective nipper.
In no time, volunteer banders, grabbers and holders had blood trickling down their arms and legs.
After being banded, some birds huddled on the ground, looking dazed. Others shook themselves indignantly and lunged with a vengeance at humans in their path.
Young pelicans are not pretty children.
Fuzzy, unkempt feathers covering the body are topped by the distinctive bent-straw shape of the pelican's long neck and beak. A pelican's collapsed pouch, called a gular, flaps like laundry in the wind.
``They're such a strange creature in a way, and almost prehistoric-looking,'' said Weske, a former researcher with the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C. ``They aren't the most agile birds, but they're not as clumsy as they seem.
``What they do, they do very well. . . like the precision they fly out over the waves,'' he said, adding that they exhibit no such grace on land. ``They kind of galumph along, but they seem to do really well in the bushes.''
Pelicans, once on the federal endangered species list after the pesticide DDT damaged their reproductive abilities, have returned tenfold to North Carolina coastal waters, said Browne, an entomologist at North Carolina State University. Adult 20-pound birds now range as far north as Ocean City, Md., and as far south as Cuba.
Browne and Weske have worked together banding terns and pelicans since the 1970s. Backed by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, which provides the stamped bands, collects data and sends it them, both men do the pelican studies for no pay. About 4 percent of the bands are returned annually, mostly from Florida, said Weske, a Maryland resident who now owns a computer consulting business.
Banding is a harmless way to monitor the longevity, distribution and population of the species. If someone finds a dead pelican, the band tells how to notify the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.
``It's sort of like, `Santa Claus, North Pole,' '' Browne said. The finder will receive a certificate of appreciation that provides details on the bird's origin and age.
Pelicans have always nested in North Carolina, Weske said. When DDT was banned in 1972, only 15 viable nests remained in Ocracoke, a fraction of the 300 pairs that had for years inhabited the southern Outer Banks fishing village. By 1978, the pelicans started returning to North Carolina - and today there are an estimated 4,000 pairs nesting along the coast.
But now they seem to prefer Oregon Inlet to their former favorite hangout around Ocracoke. About 800 pairs live on the banding island.
Weske and Browne also oversee the banding of pelicans and terns in Ocracoke, Cedar Island, Harker Island, the Cape Fear River and Ocean City.
``Pelicans are doing fine,'' Weske said. ``I don't think they need to be managed now. . . but managers are always saying, ``We need information. We need facts.' Oftentimes, things are in a tailspin before we get those facts.'' ILLUSTRATION: [Color Photo]
DREW C. WILSON photos
The Virginian-Pilot
Chris Musi, above, of Holden Beach, needed both hands for a pair of
young brown pelicans he helped gather for banding just after dawn
Monday on an island in Oregon Inlet. The tags help researchers keep
track of the big fish-eaters. At right, a day-old hatchling, next to
its unhatched sibling, has an appearance only a mother pelican could
love. DDT contamination reduced the Outer Banks' pelican population
to endangered levels 20 years ago. Today, they're back and
plentiful. by CNB