SEVEN THOUSAND PELICANS
“Plumpskin, buffskin, pelican, gee!
We think no bird so happy as we.
Plumpskin, buffskin, pelican jill!
We thought so then and we think so still.”
So runs an ancient and foolish ditty. There is something about it which
makes one think of pelicans as doing a little dance and thus happily
singing, wing in wing, so to speak. Observing the pelicans that meet the
steamers at Jacksonville and some others later in captivity, I had
thought them of a grave and reverend dignity which belied the ditty and
its suggestions. Now I know better. It is a bachelor pelican that first
gave me an inkling of “how happy the life of a bird must be.” He has no
home, this bachelor pelican, just a habitat which is a tiny cove in the
long island which bars the Indian River from the sea five or six miles
below Fort Pierce. So deep does this cove dent the island that the
roaring surf of the east side is but a stone throw from its tip, yet the
wind which blows almost always from the sea leaves its surface
unruffled. Here my bachelor pelican lives to sail and soar and cut
capers all day long in a snug harbor which is untenanted save by a
winter fisherman’s houseboat.
No more than he minded this houseboat did he seem to mind me as I
watched his antics. At times he seemed severe and dignified enough. That
was when he sat erect and motionless on the surface, his noble, white
head and reverend beard of a bill having all the repose of a prophet.
But that did not last long with him. With a shrug the dignity vanished
and his whole attitude was positively humorous. The change would come
suddenly, a sort of wink of the whole body. Nor was this for me. He just
seemed to wink to himself and say, “Humph, but wasn’t that a solemn
pose!” It is singular how dignity can become grotesque humor with a
shrug, with this bachelor pelican. After his shrug began a little
whirling motion as he sat on the water, spinning softly to the right and
left, ogling the surface as if for fish. Then suddenly he sprang into
the air. The pelican has hardly any tail. His huge beak ludicrously
overweights him forward. By all laws of physics he ought to tumble head
first into the waves every time he springs from them. Instead, his
seven-foot spread of wings catches the air with vigorous grace and he is
absolute master of the art of flight. So my bachelor friend held himself
on level wings, then of a sudden pitched downward and drove that huge,
misshapen beak into the water, about half of the bird going with it. I
know by the way he smacked his mandibles that he took in a good-sized
fish, probably a mullet, while beneath the surface.
The general color of this bird was a slaty brown, except for his head
and whole neck, which was white, not showing even a tinge of any other
color. Crossing the narrow strip of island and looking forth upon the
sea I saw other pelicans flying in slant-lined flocks just within the
breakers. These pelicans wasted no time in humorous antics. They flew in
business-like fashion, skimming so low in the hollows of the waves that
they sometimes disappeared. They took fish on the dive much as my
bachelor friend had; but, whereas he seemed to do it with a schottische
movement, there was no antic dance in their motions. They were in dead
earnest. They were marked differently from my young friend, too, for
these sea hunters were in full breeding plumage, their hind heads and
necks being a rich, seal brown. They were hunting menhaden more than a
score of miles from the young, being brooded in the grass nests in the
big rookery on Pelican Island, and they had no time for humorous antics.
There is no accounting for what birds do. It is the custom, almost
universal, in birddom to mate and breed in the spring of the year. Even
in the tropics this holds good. The pelicans of the Gulf of Mexico
breed in April, yet those of the East Coast begin their mating and flock
to the single rookery, which is the nesting place of all East Coast
pelicans, in November. Just below the twenty-eighth parallel of latitude
there is in a sheltered bay in the Indian River a low, sandy island
about three acres in extent. Here all East Coast pelicans breed, and
have done so since man has known the Indian River. The pioneer birds who
first chose this island chose wisely. The place is as far north as they
dare breed for fear of cold, which would kill the young birds. These are
born naked and for the first few weeks of their existence die of cold
even under ordinary temperature, if left unbrooded over fifteen minutes.
Hence one or the other of the parent birds keeps the nest during that
time. On the other hand, they wish to be as far north as they can for
two reasons. One is that excessive heat kills the unprotected young as
well as cold. Another is that the menhaden fishing is better up the
coast than down. Any fish is good enough for the palate of the adult
pelican, but for some reason the birds prefer to feed their young almost
entirely on menhaden.
In October the breeding impulse comes to these East Coast birds and the
stubby, brown mane grows along the backs of their long necks. Then they
collect together in flocks of hundreds, up and down the coast, and begin
to draw in toward the old home spot. Not, however, until all the clan
has gathered do they bear down upon the island and take possession,
coming in a multitude in the night as our Northern migrants come to
their breeding places. Thus the night herons which winter in this region
come to their rookeries in the Massachusetts cedar swamps. On a day
early last November there were no pelicans on Pelican Island. On another
day the warden whose ceaseless vigilance protects these birds during the
nesting season from the depredations of mankind estimated that there
were seven thousand there. But not all these pelicans were in breeding
plumage or were there to breed. At the close of old home week the
white-necked birds seem in the main to have departed, probably to take
up the lightsome joys of bachelor existence like my friend in the cove.
The others began nest building and placed some fifteen hundred nests on
the three acre island. Then indeed began a carnival of Pelican growing
which lasts each year until late June has brought the longest days,
before the last young bird is full grown and the island is once more
deserted. In fact, last year, though the breeding was finished by the
usual time, the birds did not wholly leave the island and its vicinity
the year through, but hung about in considerable numbers.
Pelican Island lies so low that an extra high tide works havoc among the
nests, which are of necessity placed on the ground. There is one
mangrove tree on all the island now, though it once was covered. The
weight of nests and roosting birds seem to have combined, perhaps with
other causes, to kill them out. The former habit of the pelicans was to
build entirely in trees. Now, rather than leave their beloved island,
they have become ground builders. Seen in the distance as the boat draws
rapidly nearer, this island seems to be covered with a vast collection
of gray driftwood, so close together are the brooding birds. I have seen
driftwood-covered low islets on the Alaskan coast of Bering Sea which
looked very like it. Again as you come nearer the semblance changes,
fifteen hundred white pelican polls lifted high on long necks to see
what is coming give it the appearance of a field of daisies.
The time was when these pelicans that brood three thousand young birds
in all stages from fresh-laid eggs to youngsters that can fly and are as
big as their parents, could gauge exactly the distance at which a
shotgun will kill. In those days, before the Department of Agriculture
made this tiny islet a Government reservation, and through the efforts
of the Audubon Society Warden Kroegel had been made its guardian, twelve
thousand feet spread of pelican wings were in the air at shooting
distance every time a boat approached. But pelicans are canny birds and
they
[Illustration: “The others began nest building and placed some fifteen
hundred nests on the three-acre island”]
have now learned to sit tight. They simply lift their heads high, draw
their feet up under them so as to be ready for a spring if need be, and
look at you with all the vast dignity of which the bird is capable. The
lightsome frivolity of my white-necked pelican down in the little cove
is not for this place. Nor is there any look of real alarm in their wise
and solemn old faces as I step out of the boat and walk slowly up among
them.
A sudden motion will startle them into flight, but moving slowly enough
one may approach almost within poking distance of the birds before they
lift into the air and sail away. Truly it is an astonishing sight. On
the higher parts of the little island, one great grass nest almost
touches the next and there is hardly room for the brooding birds to take
flight at the same time without rapping one another with their great
wings. After a moment the general current of the life of the island goes
on undisturbed by the presence of an undemonstrative visitor. Birds come
and go, lifting their great, overbalanced bodies into the air with
incredible ease and flapping away, sailing in from the distance and
dropping with lifted wings to the desired spot.
The two birds alternate in seeking food and sitting upon the nest and
seem to share equally in all care of the young. The ceremony of nest
relief is sometimes a most curious thing. The approaching bird lights
near the nest, points his bill high in air and draws nearer, wagging his
head most comically from side to side. Thereupon the sitting bird sticks
a long bill down into the nest, twitches half-raised wings nervously and
croaks a hoarse word or two which might well be a complaint of weariness
and cramps from long waiting. Then the two pause for a second and the
sitting bird steps down off the nest in most unconcerned fashion,
waddles a step or two, lifts into the air and is gone, probably to get a
much needed menhaden dinner. The other bird then climbs up on the nest
and takes up the labor of incubation or brooding. It is only after the
chicks have grown the white down which precedes the real feathers that
they are left alone by the parents. There are many reasons for this. If
the weather is cool they die of exposure to the cold; if it is hot the
sun is equally fatal. But there is more to fear than this. Young
pelicans after a certain stage of growth step down out of the nest and
prowl about a bit between meals. Full-grown young have a way of gobbling
up the newborn if unprotected by the presence of the mother.
In fact, the infant mortality on Pelican Island, even under its present
halcyon condition of Government protection, is high. The pelican must be
an awkward sitter. Addled eggs are to be found on the ground among the
nests in considerable numbers. When the island was clothed with the low
mangrove trees nesting conditions were much safer. Then the young birds
did not leave the nest until about to fly, and the newly hatched were
therefore better protected from being devoured by the neighbors’
children. Moreover, the habit of wandering from the nest on the ground
makes it difficult for parents to surely find their own offspring when
they come back with food. Any mother with a neck full of fish is good
enough for the youngsters, hence when a cargo arrives they all rush for
it indiscriminately and the real offspring is lucky if he gets the
luncheon. But the worst thing about the ground nesting is an occasional
high tide which comes, driven by northeast winds, and floods the low
portion of the island, sweeping large numbers of eggs and helpless young
to disaster.
The pelican mother lays three eggs, pure white, about three inches by
two in diameter, being thus slightly smaller than those of the Canadian
goose. If for any reason the eggs of the young birds are destroyed
another litter is laid. Perhaps the frequent destruction of eggs or
nestlings in the crowded communal life of the island accounts for the
prolongation of the breeding season here. The eggs hatch in about four
weeks, and it takes about ten weeks more for the young to acquire full
flight plumage. Three and a half months should normally be all the time
one pelican family would stay on the island. After that the young birds
would roam freely to fish with their elders. But as a matter of fact,
from the laying of the first egg on the island to the departure of the
last young bird is nearer seven months than three and a half. Of the
seven thousand pelicans which come to the island at the beginning of the
season, but three thousand actually have young there at any one time.
What becomes of the other four thousand? Do they not breed that year?
These are interesting questions for the ornithologists to answer by
further careful observation. It seems to me that it is likely that those
birds which do not find a breeding place on the island in November
return after the first brood of the more fortunate is off and occupy
their places. The day that I was there, in the latter half of January, I
saw a pelican carrying grass in his beak, evidently for nest building.
With the exception of that croak of recognition with which the sitting
bird greets its relieving mate, the adult pelican is as silent as the
severe dignity of the bird in repose would seem to warrant. With the
young it is another matter. Pelican Island is anything but a silent
place during the breeding season. Croaks, cries and squawks come from
the young birds, at times rising to a considerable din. The young bird
just pushing
[Illustration: A little group of half-grown young pelicans on the edge
of Pelican Island]
his beak through the shell does it with a grunt. The black, blind
nestlings croak and the larger the bird the shriller his voice and the
louder. To approach a nest when the old bird is off is to be immediately
greeted by harsh cries on the part of the young birds there. Pointing my
finger closely at one of these youngsters, a downy chick of some weeks’
growth, with a growing bill and a pouch already showing beneath it, I
was somewhat surprised to be greeted with a peace offering of a six-inch
menhaden which the bird produced from some unfathomed depth of his
anatomy, held for a lingering moment lothly in his beak and then laid at
my feet. Probably he thought me an overgrown youngster of ravening
tendencies and he preferred to give his fish rather than himself.
At nightfall soft winds from the sea blow the crimson sunset up over the
little island and hang it in gorgeous tapestry all along a pearl-blue,
western sky. Through this gorgeous glow the last pelicans sail silently
home. The hoarse cries of the feeding young sound through the rapidly
growing dusk, the old birds bathe in the river still crimson with
reflections of the passing sunset glory, and then silence broods over
the brooding thousands. The young are warm and snug between the mother
bird and the nest, and the old birds sleep with head tucked under wing.