California Pelican, c 1855

Sketches of the Natural History of California.

THE PELICAN OF CALIFORNIA.

ALEX. S. TAYLOR.




This bird, called by the Spaniards Alcatraz, is very abundant on the Pacific Coasts of North and South America. The variety inhabiting the shores of California is found from Acapulco to the Columbia river, and is migratory in its habits.




The male bird weighs between ten and twelve pounds and measures 4 3-4 feet from the beak to the end of the tail. The wings w hen stretched out, measure, including across the breast, 7 3-4 feet. One of the wings measures 3 1-3 feet, and across the breast 7 1-2 inches. From base of neck to vent 15 inches—the neck is 21 inches long. The upper mandible is 13 1-2 inches long and 1 1-4 inches broad; it shuts down mostly within the lower mandible, and has three midparallel ridges running along the roof of the mouth, two of which are grooved in their centre, and hard and sharp near to the beak.




The beak is marked black and yellow, and longitudinally corrugated; acutely curved, very sharp, hard, and slightly nicked, and is 1 3-4 inch long by 3-8 of an inch thick and broad. The lower mandible is as long as the upper, but is 2 inches broad and which can easily be stretched to 8, —to it is woven into and attached the pouch, which, by measurement of one a few weeks ago, I found to be capable of containing over five gallons of water —the lower beak is of the size of a filbert and very hard. The edges of the mandibles and of the upper beak are sharp and fine. The head is 4 1-2 inches long by 3 inches thick and broad, and shaped triangular.




The eye is surrounded with bare skin and is 5-8 of an inch ; the color of the iris in the male is of a gay, silvery steel —that of the female is of a dull pinkish brown —the ear is situated 2 inches from the eye. The bill of the male is oval, ridged, spoon shaped, and fleshed of a red color; that of the female of the same form and of a dulled white. The nasal organ is only a slit at the base of bill—the nasal groove extends to the beak—the tongue is a small grizzly elongation on the point of the triangular bone of the trachea. The skin of the pouch is of dirty lead color, entirely bare of feathers, marked with lines and extremely elastic and soft; the trachea is in the middle of it, immediately under the termination of the jaw bones. The legs are of a lead color, 8 inches in length; the palm of the foot is 6 inches long and measures 6 1-2 inches across the end of the toes, which are armed with blackish nails.




The tail of the bird has 24 feathers, is of a rounded fan shape, and 6 inches long.




The bones arc all air-celled, and very light; the skeleton weighs only 2 1-4 pounds; the wing bones of each wing, although 30 1-2 inches in length, weigh only 2 1-4 ounces. The oil sack is very large, and weighs nearly half an ounce—its covering is of long white featherets which are always charged with oil.




The plumage of the male is in color distinct from that of the female. The head of the male and upper portion of its heck is covered with long, close, plushy featherets, of a beautiful yellow color; the lower edge ot the neck at the breast has a band of the same color. Both birds have a long crest down the base of the head and along the upper part of the neck. The breast and belly of both is downy white. The wings and back of the male bird are of a white and silvery steel color intermingled in elegant stripes and mottles. The female is about one-sixth smaller and generally weighs 8 pounds.




The color of its plumage is of a dull heavy lead caste, and she is much more stupid and slow than the male. The stomach of the male is covered with a large quantity of hard, deep, orange-colored fat, within which is the gizzard, of a long oval figure; within the mass of fat, (which weighs one and a half pounds,) the gut is found in long convolutions intermingled throughout its substance. This is entirely wanting in the female so far as I have seen ; both being examined at the same time and season.




The meat of the male is brownish red, and of a much finer texture than that of the other, and is more abundant in quantity, The primary wing feathers of both are about 18 inches long and of a dull black—the breadth of wing is 10 inches. The general features of both birds are alike except the color of the plumage and mandibles—the bill is straight, and is flattened near the beak. Tho skin of the bird is covered with a mass of flocculent cells highly air-charged. None of the figures or descriptions of this Pelican, as delineated in Whitelaw's Goldsmith of 1840—Milne Edwards of Paris 1834— Carpenter's Zoology of 1844—nor Carpenters Cuvier of London 1849, agree with the particular features, when closely observed, of the California variety of this bird.




The figure in Carpenter's Zoology, pp. 521, vol. 1, is nearly like the bird we attempt to describe. These authors all confound the sea with the land Pelican,




The egg of our pelican is of alight green color, marked with blackish brown splotches, and its surface is roughened and not polished like that of the eggs of ordinary land birds. The substance of the egg is encased in a tough calcareous pellicle nearly as thick as a fowl's eggshell.




The albumen of the egg when boiled is of a transparent milky color. The size of the egg is three and a half inches in length, and two inches in diameter —it is long in figure and sharply peaked, measuring only one-fourth of an inch at the apex; it weighs nearly three ounces. Great numbers of these eggs arc brought to the market of San Francisco from the Farralones islands and the neighboring rocks and islets of that part of our coast, and form an important article of food: many persons prefer them to fowl's eggs. In January, 1852, a sloop of 25 tons, loaded with bird's eggs from the Farralones, was cast ashore on Monterey beach.




The Pelican of our coasts lays its eggs and hatches its young on all the solitary islands and rocky islets from the Gulf and Ocean shores of Lower California up to Vancouver Island, as I am informed by old sailors. It lays from four to six of a season, beginning to hatch and bring forth their young in March and April—the young are able to fly in September of the same year.




The California Pelican is said to be found on the Pacific Coasts from Valdivia in Chili, to Vancouver Island. There is a smaller variety of the species found on the same southern coasts, and those of the Gallipagos Islands (where they are very numerous) which arc also said to be similar in color to ours, though one quarter smaller in size. An old whaler informs me that on the shores of Behring Straits and the N. W. Arctic, a variety of white Pelican, the size of a common duck, is found in great numbers. It will be seen that the Ocean Pelican of California is very different from that of the Great White Pelican of the Lagoons of the Salinas, Sacramento, and Tulare valleys of out State.




This bird, which we have not yet seen, is stated to us by old settlers and hunters, to be nearly double the size of the Sea Pelican when standing —it is entirely white except the ends of the outer wing feathers which are black. This Pelican never visits or feeds on the sea coasts, The California Pelican begins to arrive in the Bay of Monterey about the first of September, following the schools of innumerable sardines, herring and mackerel which visit us then —and leave about the first of February.




The pursuit of their prey is the most lively and sprightly habit of the bird. During this period they abound in great numbers, chasing the fish with great pertinacity and greediness in fellowship with the most astonishing companies of all kind of our sea fowl. In a clear day when the small fish are plentiful, they may be seen close to the shore in numbers of fifty and a hundred, circling with flocks of gulls at an elevation of twenty to thirty yards above the sea.




This appears to be done with a view of scaring the fish into a close body, (or as the Spanish say, corraling them,) when the Pelican descends with the velocity of a shot ka-plunck into the water, scooping up into its extended lower mandible and pouch the stunned and frightened small fry; when they rebound like a cork to the surface. The sight of twenty and thirty of these huge birds falling at once like a living cataract, from the air, and splashing the water into spraying fountains, with the shrieks and quarrels of the gulls and shags snatching the fish from the bigger birds, is as curious, as it is striking and novel, and forms one of the most animated features in the fall months of the beautiful Bay of Monterey.




They often continue this manoeuvre from " night to morn and morn till dewy eve," keeping up such an infernal clatter and racket, with the bleatings and barkings of sea lions and others, intent on the same errand, as to persuade a stranger in these parts, that old ocean was giving up its forgotten dead of a thoussand years. As the Pelican desends it gives its body a quick spiral movement, and plunges its whole body under the water, with its wings close shut to its sides. When it rises buoyant from the sea it uses its wings as paddles, and flaps its webbed feet on the water by springs for over fifty feet, before it can sail away into the air.




Towards evening they may be seen in straight regimental lines of ten and fifteen, one following close behind the other, leisurely and solemnly wending their way to their rocky or sandy barracks hard by the ocean shore, In the fall of 1852, the Pelican arrived in our bay in numbers incredible. In the afternoon and night they could always be found on our first lagoon, sitting lazily on the ground, or perched on the trees overhanging the water, sleeping or dozing with the bills and heads under the wings. When on land it can be easily approached, and is a stupid, lazy, dirty creature, and generally full of whacking bird-lice. It is a heavy melancholy looking animal, with the eyes and leer of an ogre.




When gorged they can bo easily approached and killed with a stick: their only weapons are their wings and beaks, and it is rather unpleasant when you get your fingers shut down upon by its scissors-like mandibles. The Indians of Tobasco, Campcachy, and Yucatan, are said by the old Jesuit Fathers, to train these birds so well, as to catch fish for their owners, like the Cormorants of the Chinese. The Spanish ladies of those countries and simple days, are stated by the same creditable authorities, to cure the pouch skins so well as to make elegant work-bags and other ornamental paraphernalia. The Indians thereaway also use them for tobacco bags. We have read in sonic late account of outlandish parts that they are used for making gloves, and that they take dye-stuffs of brilliant colors remarkably well.




These birds were particularly noticed by the early discoverers and navigators of Lower and Upper California, by the Jesuit Fathers, and more particularly in the Bay of Monterey in the voyage of Vizcaino in 1602. Monterey, Jan. 13, 1855.