P. erythrorhynchos Skull Replica or American White Pelican measures 17.0 inches. American White Pelican Skull is museum quality polyurethane cast. 2-part skull (separate cranium & jaw). Made in USA. Cast of Original California Academy of Sciences specimen.
The P. erythrorhynchos or American white pelican is a large aquatic soaring bird from the order Pelecaniformes. It breeds in interior North America, moving south and to the coasts, as far as Costa Rica, in winter.
Unlike the Brown pelican the American white pelican does not dive for its food. Instead, it catches its prey while swimming. Each bird eats more than 4 pounds of food a day. The fish taken by pelicans can range from the size of minnows to 3.5 pound pickerels.
Typical fish prey include Cypriniformes like common carp, Lahontan tui chub, minnows, and shiners. Perciformes like Sacramento perch or yellow perch, rainbow trout, salmon, catfish, and jackfish.
Other animals eaten by P. erythrorhynchos or American white pelican are crayfish, amphibians, and sometimes larval salamanders. Birds nesting on saline lakes, where food is scarce, will travel great distances to better feeding grounds.
American white pelicans come together in groups of a dozen or more birds to feed, as they can thus cooperate and corral fish to one another. When this is not easily possible in deep water, where fish can escape by diving out of reach they prefer to forage alone.
The P. erythrorhynchos or American white pelican’s also steal food on occasion from other birds, a practice known as kleptoparasitism. White pelicans are known to steal fish from other pelicans, gulls, and cormorants from the surface of the water and, in one case, from a great blue heron while both large birds were in flight.
They are colonial breeders, with up to 5,000 pairs per site. The birds arrive on the breeding grounds in March or April. Nesting starts between early April and early June.
During the breeding season, both males and females develop a pronounced bump on the top of their large beaks. This conspicuous growth is shed by the end of the breeding season.
The nest is a shallow depression scraped in the ground, into which some twigs, sticks, reeds, or similar debris have been gathered.
After about one week of courtship and nest-building, the female lays a clutch of usually two or three eggs, sometimes just one, sometimes up to six.
Both parents incubate for about one month. The young leave the nest 3 to 4 weeks after hatching; at this point, usually only one young per nest has survived.
They spend the following month in a creche or “pod”, moulting into immature plumage and eventually learning to fly.
After fledging, the parents care for their offspring some three more weeks, until the close family bond separates in late summer or early fall.
The P. erythrorhynchos or American white pelican birds gather in larger groups on rich feeding grounds in preparation for the migration to the winter quarters. They migrate south by September or October.
