Scientific name:
Pelecanus occidentalis

Natural spread:
Atlantic -, Pacific-coasts of America

in contrast to all remaining types of the pelicans carries off his food existing from fishings the brown pelican or Meerespelikan in the nosedive. If it spotted its loot, it lets himself so down-fall vertically from a height by 10 m, occasionally up to 23 m. Although it can rotate around its axis on that occasion up to 180° in order to hold through it balance and direction, its head remains fixed on the loot during the entire flight. The wings are bent and are opened half. Is back-bent the Hal S-förmig on that occasion. Only at the last moment before the lapel, the brown pelican takes wings and legs far back and extends the head exactly. Although airbags under the skin muffle the impact, the big bird can dive virtually 1 m deep. Squabs must widen its innate submersible-ness only through much practice and imitation of the alto-birds. Probably, this difficult diving-process is u. a. a cause that approximately three quarters of the re-finding of rang brown pelicans in its 1. Perished year of life.

Shape Another peculiarity of this type forms, seasonal differences in the end-coloring of the plumage. During the incubation in March and April, the head-upper side shines knows, beak and beak-bag are gray-green, iris and neck-rear against it deep-brown. In the autumn and in the winter, the head-upper side colors yellow, the neck-rear knows while the befiederten skin-parts become around dark-blue about the eye. The beak assumes different orange-tinges. Seam the incubation, so the iris becomes straw-yellow, the eye-ring shining-red and the beak-bag ebony.

Spread With a span of 2 m, the brown pelican is a powerful and agile plane, with it a persevering sailor. it lives in America's Atlantic-coasts of the southern states of the USA until Venezuela and the Pacific of means-California until Chile. The Chilean race is regarded also as own type. On this, offshore islands serves Peru as important supplier of the guano, a nature-fertilizer, who consists of the feces of the here living Meeresvögel, it.

Endangering At the coasts of the USA, the brown pelican becomes increasingly rarer through the onward destruction of its habitat and the contamination of the water. Examinations before California's coast show that particularly the insect-insecticide DDT and its by-products endanger the local populations. DDT evokes disturbances of the metabolism of the parents-animals, who lead to the storage space of too thin-stale-y eggs. Such eggs often are destroyed already by the net weight of the brooding birds.