PELICANS.
TO the discouragement of every one who hoped that the principles of bird preservation were becoming popularised in the country, as they certainly are in the towns, both the pelicans which for some years have lived in a natural state in St. James's Park have been shot while making an excursion into the country. The cause of their leaving the park was the temporary running off of the water from the lake in order to clean it. Doubtless the birds thought that this was a natural process, and that their supply of fish, which they daily received from their 'keepers, would now cease, though the said fish always came from Billingsgate. So with great sense they flew away to find other fish-producing waters, and arrived, one at Frensham Pond, and the other at Little- hampton, at the mouth of the Arun Valley, where, to the discredit of each locality, they were respectively shot. The late Lord Lilford, writing to a friend in 1890, said :—" I should very much like to see Pelicans on the wing about the London Parks. There is no reason whatever why this should not be so. The Crested Pelican is very hardy, and may be made perfectly tame, but he must always have his regular supply of fishes. I hear that Storks and Cormorants have been introduced into St. James's Park, so good-bye to Goslings, Ducklings, and I should rather fear Dabchicks also. On the other hand, the Pelican is quite harmless as regards other fowl, and his ways and manners are a joy for ever." Lord Lilford's experience of tame pelicans had been gained at home. He received in the autumn of 1888 a pair of young crested pelicans from Mr. Saunderson, the English Consul at Galatz, on the Danube. A third was also sent, but forwarded by Lord Lilford to Kew, where it became a well- known and respected inhabitant of the garden pool (as is noted in Mrs. F. Drewitt's Life of her brother), but which we believe ultimately took flight, and after spending some time in the reservoirs of the West Middlesex Water Company at Barnes, was shot while making a more distant expedition. Those kept at Lilford were fed entirely on cheap sea-fish, not fresh-water roach or dace.
The flight of the pelican, to which Lord Lilford makes allusion, is one of the finest exhibitions of many-sided wing- power shown by any birds. No one would guess this when watching the creature on land, or even when swimming. Seen in such positions, it does not even appear to have a long wing. But neither does the albatross. By a careful adjust- ment of Nature, the increase of the wing in these birds is due largely to an extreme lengthening of the second joints, equivalent to the part of our arm which lies between the elbow and the wrist. This when at rest the bird keeps folded alongside its body. In a fowl the joint looks like a shoulder (which it is not), and in the chicken, or even the pigeon, this lies well back, and the chest projects in front of it. It will be noticed that in the albatross or pelican this joint comes so far forward that it is almost on a level with the front of the breast, or even projects beyond it somewhat. The next joint, which folds backwards, is also very much prolonged. When the whole machine is opened out, like the opening of a two- foot pocket-rule, the stretch is surprising. The wings of a giant albatross are eleven feet across. Those of a condor, which disputes with the pelican the position of being the heaviest bird that flies, are eight feet and a half across. Those of an almost wild mute swan, which the writer saw shot and
measured last season, were seven feet eight inches across ; and those of a large pelican shot by Mr. J. A. Bryden on the Bolltlei River were nine feet eight inches across ! When on the shores of Lake Ngami Mr. Bryden saw the pelicans coming home to roost, just as, cormorants come to the cliffs to roost at night, but in a very different fashion. "High in the air above the river, their flight clearly marked in long wavy skeins against the rose and amber sky, flew steadily and slowly hundreds upon hundreds of great birds. It was not in the least evident what these birds might be, seen passing over high in the evening sky, but the native riding with us said that they were pelicans. It was a marvellous and most beautiful sight. Each bird followed its neighbour in single file in the most regular order; the great wings (and no one can imagine how great is their spread till he has seen them extended in the dead specimen) beating on their passage through the air in very solemn and stately fashion. There were numerous different bands in the air, each numbering some hundreds, and as the long skeins and circles sometimes crossed each other or united in mid- air, all sharply silhouetted (in white) against the evening sky, the effect was indescribably beautiful. Presently, before we had actually reached the river, the skeins trended lower and lower, and the birds sank, in orderly and majestic flight, into the reed-beds and shallows for their night's repast and repose." When M. Many wrote his great work, "Le Vol des Oiseaux," he was able by the aid of his photographic gun to include a whole series of views of the flight of pelicans descending to earth just as Mr. Bryden describes them, all the positions of the feathers, wings, neck, feet, and head being shown in order.. These photographs were taken as early as 1890 in the Jardin d'Acclimatation at Paris, where the pelicans were at liberty to use their enormous wings as they liked. The birds when descending began to open out the wide webs of their feet, which in the photographs look like horses' hoofs.
Various explanations have been given of the ancient belief that the pelicans feed their young on the blood from their breasts. Its origin has been conjectured from the fact that flamingos do feed their young with a kind of red secretion of half-digested food, as do pigeons. But its permanence is doubt- less due to the eagerness with which the writers of the monkish bestiaries seized on the story as an allegory of the Passion. The birds really feed their young on the, fish which they catch. A Russian naturalist found a colony of the crispus or Dalmatian pelican nesting on a lake in the Calmuck Steppes. This lake held no fish, and the birds used to go to the Volga, a distance of seventy miles, to catch fish, returning with their pouches crammed with them. Given a speed of thirty-five or forty miles an hour in a calm, this is, we imagine, a record journey made by birds to feed their young, and only the provision of a "fish-basket" in the shape of the pouch could make it possible to bring enough in the day. Like the small cormorants of South Africa, the com- bined fishing operations of which were described by Mr. J. G. Millais in his "Breath from the Veldt," pelicans sometimes arrange a joint fish-driving party. " They collect in a shallow bay, and arrange themselves in perfect order, the two species joining for that purpose. The cormorants, their inseparable companions, do not fail to join in the feast, and gulls and other fish-eating birds are certain to put in an appearance. The pelicans, arranged in a semicircle, give the signal and approach the shore, striking the water with their wings, and plunging in their heads, whilst the cormorants, as an advanced guard, plunge again and again, and create terror
among the fish When the peasants see the pelicans fishing thus they say, The pelicans are casting their nets.' "
Pelicans never dive, but only scoop fish up by dipping their beaks or heads. It is curious that among the marvels attri- buted to them in the care of their young, the old writers missed a most extraordinary habit which they sometimes ex- hibit in this connection. At the New York " Zoo " it was noticed that in a large indoor pool used for the wildfowl, in Bronx Park in winter-time the pelicans would often amuse themselves by scooping up some little Javanese pigmy ducks in their pouches, and holding them there for amusement. They would sometimes add the further entertainment, from the spectators' point of view, of tossing these ducks up in the air and catching them. An African traveller who recently name quietly round a corner of reeds in a canoe on one of the
lakes almost paddled out an old pelican with one or two young ones. The bird instantly scooped them up into her pouch, and swam off with them into the reeds.
The pelican best known to the ancient European writers is common in South-Eastern Europe, South-Western Asia, and North-East Africa. Another still larger species, the crispet, also frequents South-Eastern Europe, while there is another species in North America which develops a horny escres. cence on its bill in the breeding season. Australia has -a species with a black tail and black wing coverts, and two smaller and more marine species are found, the one in both North and South America, and the other in Southern Asia, As naturalists estimate the number of species at anything from eleven to six, it is obviously somewhat difficult to distin- guish them. Perhaps the best known of the Western breed- ing-places of the two commonest species in Europe is on the islands in the Danube delta. It seems probable that in ancient days they may have wandered as far as the great English Feu. Two specimens of the humerus of very large pelicans have been found there, one of which apparently was that of a young bird, which may have been bred in our island. Escapes of tame pelicans seem to have been remarked very early. Sir Thomas Browne, in recording the appearance of a pelican in Norfolk, duly noted that at that time one had escaped from the lake which Charles II. had caused to be stocked with wildfowl in St. James's Park.
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