Pelecanidae
Australian Pelican
Pelecanus conspicillatus
The Tide's Great Spoon
- Length
- 170 cm
- Wingspan
- 250 cm
- Family
- Pelecanidae
Identification
A huge white waterbird with black flight feathers and a bill that seems, at first, a joke. The pouch is pale pink to salmon, the eye a small dark point in a vast, considering face. In the air they become almost light — a cross of white on a thermal, the bill tucked like a tool put away.
Distinctive marks
- Enormous pale pink bill and pouch
- White body, black wings
- Short legs, unhurried walk
- Soars on thermals in loose circles
- Often in working parties on a sandbar
Behaviour & ecology
They fish cooperatively, herding bait in the shallows, then dip that improbable spoon. Between sessions they stand on a spit and do nothing with great authority. A single bird over the bay is a weather report.
Voice
Mostly silent in the air. At a colony, a low grunt and a bill-clapping that sounds like wet timber.
On the Peninsula
Port Phillip and Western Port shores, the mouth of any estuary, and the odd flooded oval after a big rain.
Season
Year-round. Numbers swell when inland waters dry.
Diet
Fish, taken by dipping and draining the pouch — not by spearing.
Conservation
Secure, though they need undisturbed roosting spits.
Lore & resonance
The pouch is a piece of the tide the bird was allowed to keep. When it fills and empties, you are watching the bay think with a borrowed mouth.
If you would attract them
Do not feed them. A closed sandwich and a long look from the seawall is the whole practice. Give roosting birds the spit; walk around.
