San Juan Capistrano, Calif., may have its swallows, but the Bay Area and Pearland have something much bigger. Namely, white pelicans, which have made their annual return to the Gulf Coast.
The cliff swallows that return to Capistrano are pretty, fist-sized multicolored birds. The American white pelican, however, is a massive creature.
“White pelicans have the longest wingspan of any bird in North America,” said avid birder and master naturalist Stennie Meadours. “It’s 9 feet. It’s the largest and the heaviest bird in North America.”
The white pelicans weigh 16 pounds or so. By comparison, the familiar brown pelican is a relative pup, weighing about half as much and having a wingspan of about 6 ½ feet.
Another difference between the two types of pelicans is the way they acquire their dinner.
While the brown pelicans fly over their prey, waiting for just the right moment to tuck their wings and dive-bomb into the water to nab their fish, white pelicans take a different approach.
These waterfowl don’t dive for their prey. They often just swim along and then dip their bills into the water for a tasty morsel. But they also have a more interesting way to gather up fish.
A group of white pelicans, which can be called a pod, a brief, a pouch, a scoop or a squadron, work as a team. Sometimes they will swim and encircle a school of fish until the prey is in a small ball. Sometimes they will line up to herd the fish into the shallows. Either way, the feast is on.
The white pelicans travel a long way to get to this area, Meadours said.
“(They) nest on islands in large lakes in noncoastal states and in southern Canada,” she said. “They are very rarely seen east of the Mississippi River.”
Meadours described the white pelicans as “true snowbirds,” because they migrate here to get away from winter’s chill, but there is another reason they settle near Galveston Bay.
“What attracts them to this area is the availability of food,” she said. “They wouldn’t come here if there wasn’t anything to eat.”
The temperatures of late have not been very friendly for the out-of-towners, but the birder said they are doing OK.
“They can survive short-term cold,” she said.
Meadours suggested that those who want to see the white pelicans, or any other bird, use an app called eBird.
“You search for ‘white pelican’ and it will tell you where they are,” she said.
One place where the pelicans have settled in is on an island in a retention pond at the John Hargrove Environmental Complex, 5800 Magnolia Road, in Pearland, where as many as 60 at a time can sometimes be spotted.
The Seabrook shore is another hot spot of late, particularly at McHale Park, 400 Todville Road. Pasadena’s Armand Bayou Nature Center, 8500 Bay Area Blvd., also has a large white pelican population.
The birds will be with us for a few more months and will start heading back north sometime in April.
Meadours said it is a treat to see the white pelicans take wing.
“They are a beautiful sight when they start migrating here in the fall and when they leave in the spring,” she said. “They are just huge and when they migrate, they will soar around in circles. Sometimes they migrate in a V but sometimes a group will just glide in the heat currents.
“You can see them gliding for 20 minutes.”
John DeLapp is a freelance writer. He can be contacted at texdelapp@gmail.com.
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