American White Pelicans still look out of place in Wisconsin even though they’ve been around for well over a decade now.
My friend and I have been hiking and birdwatching for the last several Saturdays and we’ve spotted pelicans every time—either swimming in ponds or marshes or hanging out on sandbars in the Wisconsin River.
These birds have a spectacular 9-foot wingspan. They love to ride heat thermals so their presence goes unnoticed much of the time because they soar WAY up in the sky. You need binoculars to get a good look at them.
The pelicans we saw over the weekend at Horicon Marsh were dipping their heads and scooting along the water in tandem like a synchronized swimming team. They appeared to be working together to corral a school of fish or some other aquatic creatures.
According to the Cornell Lab of Ornithology’s All About Birds website, pelicans are “skillful food thieves. They steal from other pelicans trying to swallow large fish…and they also try to steal prey from Double-crested Cormorants that are bringing fish to the surface.”
The last part was especially interesting to me because we also spotted a Double-crested Cormorant in the vicinity. In the above photo you can see him at the end of the inlet in the top left corner (he’s the little mammal-shaped blob). Perhaps the Cormorant decided to sun himself and wait until the pelicans moved on because otherwise he’d be doing all the fishing for them!