2/27/2024 0 Comments Shoebill pelicanThe Sittang River in Burma was said by E W Oates to have "millions" of pelicans in 1877 and in 1929 E C Stuart Baker reported that they were still nesting in thousands along with greater adjutant storks: The same colony was revisited in 1944, and was found to have about 10 nests of pelicans and nearly 200 nests of painted stork. In June 1906, C E Rhenius visited a colony in Kundakulam in Tirunelveli district where the villages considered the birds semi-sacred. Many large breeding colonies have been recorded and several have disappeared over time. The nests are on low trees near wetlands and sometimes near human habitations. This species is a colonial breeder, often breeding in the company of other waterbirds. The spot-billed pelican is not migratory but are known to make local movements and are more widely distributed in the non-breeding season. The main habitat is in shallow lowland freshwaters. A few birds from India are known to winter in the Gangetic plains but reports of its presence in many other parts of the region such as the Maldives, Pakistan and Bangladesh has been questioned. The species is found to breed only in peninsular India, Sri Lanka and in Cambodia. Distribution and habitat Flocks fly in formation The full adult breeding plumage appears in their third year. The spots on the bill appear only after a year. They then moult into a greyish speckled plumage. The newly hatched young are covered in white down. In flight they look not unlike the Dalmatian pelican but the tertials and inner secondaries are darker and a pale band runs along the greater coverts. In breeding plumage, the skin at the base of the beak is dark and the orbital patch is pink. The tip of the bill (or nail) is yellow to orange. The pouch is pink to purplish and has large pale spots, and is also spotted on the sides of the upper mandible. The feathers on the hind neck are curly and form a greyish nape crest. It is mainly white, with a grey crest, hindneck and a brownish tail. The wingspan can vary from 213 to 250 cm (7 ft 0 in to 8 ft 2 in) while the typically large beak measured from 285 to 355 mm (11.2 to 14.0 in). The spot-billed pelican is a rather large water bird, often the largest or one of the largest native birds in the southern stretches of its range, albeit it is fairly small for a pelican. Description Breeding plumage, Vedanthangal Bird Sanctuary, India The species is monotypic: no subspecies are recognised. Brisson's specimen had been collected on the island of Luzon in the Philippines. Gmelin based his description on "Le pélican des Philippines" that had been described and illustrated in 1760 by the French zoologist Mathurin Jacques Brisson. He placed it with the other pelicans in the genus Pelecanus and coined the binomial name Pelecanus philippensis. The spot-billed pelican was formally described in 1789 by the German naturalist Johann Friedrich Gmelin in his revised and expanded edition of Carl Linnaeus's Systema Naturae. In some areas these birds nest in large colonies close to human habitations. At a distance they are difficult to differentiate from other pelicans in the region although it is smaller but at close range the spots on the upper mandible, the lack of bright colours and the greyer plumage are distinctive. It is a bird of large inland and coastal waters, especially large lakes. It breeds in southern Asia from southern Iran across India east to Indonesia. Unfortunately, the younger chick only seems to be preferred by the mother if the older one doesn't survive.The spot-billed pelican ( Pelecanus philippensis) or gray pelican is a member of the pelican family. The younger chick was forced out into the heat, and died slowly.”įor this reason, the mothers often end up raising only one chick. When the parent arrived it favoured the larger chick, shading it from the sun with its wings and giving it water from its bill. “It would drive its sibling over to the side of the nest. Instead of welcoming the second chick, it's common for the first-born to start a violent rivalry. “On several occasions the older chick attacked its younger sibling, drawing blood,” said BBC producer Alex Lanchester. So, the first-born chicks are much bigger than the younger siblings. They found that many of the nests had two chicks, which were often born about five days apart from each other. Yet, one group of scientists were lucky enough to observe these young birds, and it wasn't as heartwarming as they imagined. Shoebill birds are shy creatures, so it's rare to see the behaviors of chicks in the nest.
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