Pelican

“ XXXII. WHY HAS THE PELICAN A BIG POUCH UNDER ITS BEAK?
The Story of God and the Disobedient Man.
The story of the woodpecker finds its closest parallel in the story of the pelican. It is difficult to say which of the two is the original, and which has been borrowed from the other. Certain legends have been adapted to more than one subject, in the same manner as ballads and tales and legends are often transferred from one hero or another. It is that elasticity of adaptation, which to a certain extent gives them the popularity which they enjoy. ”

“ Beyond all birds the Pelican is fond of her young. The female sits on the nest, guarding her offspring, and cherishes and caresses them and wounds them with loving; and pierces their sides and they die. After three days the male pelican comes and finds them dead, and very much his heart is pained. ”

“ The Pelican enjoys a reputation for maternal care of her offspring; indeed, she was said to feed the young with her own blood. This was probably due to the fact that one species of Pelican has a blood-red tip to the bill. Young Pelicans have not the long bill or the pouch. Thus this bird illustrates the truth of the statement that each animal in its development climbs its own ancestral tree, or, to say it in another form, each animal in its development recapitulates the life-history of the race. ”

“ There is another and far less charming form of the legend, though more in accord with current perversions of Christian doctrine, according to which the pelican uses its blood to revive its young, after having slain them through anger aroused by the great provocation which they are supposed to give it. For an example of the use of the pelican in church architecture see fig. 36.
Mention must also be made of the purely fabulous animals of the Bestiaries, such as the basilisk, centaur, dragon, griffin, hydra, mantichora, unicorn, phoenix, etc. ”

“ The ecclesiastical fathers transferred the Egyptian story from the vulture to the pelican, but magnified the already sufficiently marvellous fable a hundredfold, for the blood of the parent was not only supposed to serve as food for the young, but was also able to reanimate the dead offspring! Augustine, commenting on Psalm cii. 5—‘I am like a pelican in the wilderness’—says: ‘These birds [male pelicans] are said to kill their young offspring by blows of their beaks, and then to bewail their death for the space of three days. ”

“ Then they mounted, one with a granted prayer,
And one with a grief unguessed.
“We are going” they said, as they rode away —
“Where the pelican builds her nest!”
They had told us of pastures wide and green,
To be sought past the sunset's glow ”

“ No one, on looking at a Pelican as it waddles about or sits at rest, would imagine the gigantic dimensions of the wings, which seem, as the bird spreads them, to have almost as unlimited a power of expansion as the pouch. ”

“ In the course of his benevolent mission he fell in love with a woman, but she and her friends played him a trick and escaped from him. The pelican at once prepared to go on the war-path. The first thing to do was to daub himself white, as is the custom of the blacks before a battle. They think the white pipe-clay strikes terror and inspires respect among the enemy. But when the pelican was only half pipe-clayed, another pelican came past, and, "not knowing what such a queer black and white thing was, struck the first pelican with his beak and killed him. ”

“ The habit of conveying its food inland before eating it is so characteristic of the Pelican that other birds take advantage of it. In some countries there is a large hawk which robs the Pelican, just as the bald-headed eagle of America robs the osprey. Knowing instinctively that when a Pelican is flying inland slowly and heavily and with a distended pouch it is carrying a supply of food to its home, the hawk dashes at it, and frightens it so that the poor bird opens its beak, and gives up to the assailant the fish which it was bearing homewards. ”

“ The best representation I have ever seen of the pelican feeding her young occurs in the works of a Roman printer, in the early part of the eighteenth century, Rocco Bernabo, who has taken for his device a pelican feeding her five young ones, a crown of thorns encircling them. [212]
The pelican has a long bag or pouch, reaching the entire length of the bill to the neck. In feeding its young, the bird squeezes the food deposited in the bag into their mouths, by strongly compressing it upon its breast with the bill. ”

“ Crest, a Pelican vulning herself proper, wings endorsed.
The myth that pelicans feed their young with their blood arose from the following habit, on which the whole superstructure of fable has been erected: They have a large bag attached to their under-bill. When the parent bird is about to feed its brood, it [Pg 185] macerates small fish in this bag or pouch; then, pressing the bag against its breast, transfers the macerated food to the mouths of the young ones.
The pelican in her piety is not an uncommon symbol upon monumental brasses. ”

“ And surely, being as we are very hopeful optimists in the cause of human nature, we need not say that the father, as he and his wife watched the suffering invalid on through the weary days and nights of the progress towards the crisis of that dangerous ailment, never once thought of the Pelican, except as a bird that feeds its young with the warm blood of its breast. ”

“ The well-known peculiarity of the pelican is the bag of naked skin that hangs from the underside of the bill, and serves as a receptacle for the catch; when it is filled the bird returns to its resting place to consume its food at leisure, or to open wide its mouth and allow its nestlings to pick out the contents of the bag. ”

“ On the broad, still reaches of the river, or the wide sheets of water artificially conserved, behold we the pelican, in no wise differing in appearance from the traditional dweller in the wilderness. Whether the Australian is unselfishly prodigal in the matter of heart's blood in favour of her young is difficult of proof, forasmuch as no living man, apparently, ever sets eyes on a youthful pelican. In the untrodden deserts which surround the heart of the continent is popularly deemed to lie the haunt of the brooding bird ”

“ The pelican, which is a very large bird, is obliged to go a great distance for food for its young, and therefore nature has provided it with a sort of bag, which she fills with such food as she knows is most agreeable to the palate of her young ones. ”

“ Here they sit and talk like magpies; or descending in quest of improbable dinners, are to be seen drawn up along the curb in front of the eating-houses, like lean rows of broken-hearted pelicans on a beach; their pockets loose, hanging down and flabby, like the pelican’s pouches when fish are hard to be caught. But these poor, penniless devils still strive to make ample amends for their physical forlornness, by resolutely reveling in the region of blissful ideals. ”

“ A Peacock affrontée, with its tail displayed, is blazoned as in its pride. A Pelican feeding its young in the conventional manner in which it is generally represented, is described as a pelican in her piety, or vulning herself. ”

“ Oh, a wondrous bird is the pelican!
His beak holds more than his belican.
He takes in his beak
Food enough for a week.
But I'll be darned if I know how the helican. ”

“ The pelican can fly, although you would never believe it, to look at the club members here. To a Zoo pelican a flight of two feet is an undertaking to be approached with much circumspection and preparation, and a summoning of resolution and screwing of courage proper to the magnitude of the feat. It takes a long time to learn to fly on to a bottom-up bucket. The Zoo pelican begins on a shadow—not a very dark one at first—and works his way up by jumping over, darker shadows to straws and pebbles, before he tries a bucket. ”

“ At the bottom of the stairs I came upon a strange-looking white object, which, upon closer inspection, turned out to be the Pelican, asleep on the floor.
He was not sleeping as any respectable bird would have done, with his head tucked under his wing; but was lying stretched out on a rug in the hall, with his head resting on a cushion. His [51] enormous beak was wide open, and he was snoring violently, and muttering uneasily in his sleep.
THE PELICAN WAS SNORING VIOLENTLY.
I did not disturb him for fear lest he should make a noise ”

“ After all, it is only another instance of that commercial honesty which makes the pelican pay for his beak out of his legs; he gives his tongue for a pouch. There should be a legend of the pelican applying honestly to Adam to buy a pouch, and the wily stork waiting and waiting on the chance of snatching one without paying for it, until all had been served out; afterwards living all its life [Pg 257] on earth in covetous dudgeon, unconsoled by its wealth of beak, legs, wings, and neck, and pining hopelessly for the lost pouch. ”

“ They then throw them up and pick out the flesh from the opened valves. Ælian merely repeats this story, only he says the shell-fish are received into the stomach. In another place he says there is mutual hostility between the pelican and the quail. The pelican was known to the Romans under the name of onocrotalus. Pliny says this bird is like the swan, except that under the throat there is a sort of second crop of astonishing capacity. There is, of course, no doubt that the pelican is here intended. ”

“ It is worthy of observation that the Pelican invariably performs a somerset under the surface; for descending, as he always does, diagonally, not perpendicularly, the head emerges looking in the opposite direction to that in which it was looking before. When the morning appetite is sated, they sit calmly on the heaving surface, looking much like a miniature fleet. ”

“ The Pelican's legs seemed to Dot to be too frail and short to bear such a big bird, not to mention the immense beak; and, when the creature stood on one leg only, she laughed; whereat the Pelican gave her another offended look, which effectually prevented their becoming friends.
The Pelican was beginning to open his beak to speak (and, being such a large beak, opening it took some time) , when the Welcome Swallow fussed into court, and said that "nothing could be done until they had some horsehair!" ”

“ The pelican in the wilderness, the owl in the ruined walls, and the sparrow in the house-top. In the first place we must explain, what the pelican signifieth: since it is born in a region which maketh it unknown to us. It is born in lonely spots, especially those of the river Nile in Egypt. Whatever kind of bird it is, let us consider what the Psalm intended to say of it. “It dwelleth,” it saith, “in the wilderness.” Why enquire of its form, its limbs, its voice, its habits? As far as the Psalm telleth thee, it is a bird that dwelleth in solitude. The owl is a bird that loveth night. ”

“ As consumers of fish they stand pre-eminent among birds, and their only rivals in the Park are the sea-lions. The specimens exhibited were collected for the Society in southern Texas.
The Brown Pelican, (Pelecanus occidentalis) , when adult, is a handsome and showy bird, and one which not only is easily reconciled to life in a comfortable aviary, but positively enjoys it. The specimens in our collection were collected for the Society on Pelican Island, Florida, and their interesting home life at that place may be studied from the series of photographs on exhibition in the Aquatic Bird House. ”

“ Its wings are long, the forked tail also is long, but the legs and feet are very small. It is a creature of the air, and gets its living by compelling hard-working sea-birds to disgorge their prey.
The last bird in this varied Order is the Pelican. Our Australian Pelican is one of the largest of its tribe. Its enormous pouch distinguishes it at once. The ten Pelicans are practically world-wide in their distribution. On the trip of the Manawatu last year round the islands of Bass Strait, we visited the Pelicans' nesting-place on Penguin Island. ”

“ The pelican is known to be a great destroyer of the flying-fish. As soon as it espies one of these fishes, it descends from the more elevated regions of the atmosphere, and remains hovering about fifty toises above the surface of the water, in order to seize its prey whenever it quits the sea. All the motions of the pelican are conducted with admirable dexterity: it does not dart head foremost, like most other birds that seek their food in the water ”

“ Montagu, however, suggests that the bird was an immature swan.
In The Zoologist for 1856 (p. 5321) , the Rev. H. B. Tristram has recorded, that on the 25th of August, 1856, the remains of a pelican were picked up on the shore at Castle Eden, Durham. Such are the scanty records of the appearance of a pelican in England in modern times.
The bone found in Cambridgeshire may have belonged to P. onocrotalus, a native of South and South-Eastern Europe, and which is stated to be “common on the lakes and watercourses of Hungary and Russia, and also seen further south in Asia and in Northern Africa.” ”

“ Al¶baÏtross (?) , n. [Corrupt. fr. Pg. alcatraz cormorant, ~, or Sp. alcatraz a pelican: cf. Pg. alcatruz, Sp. arcaduz, a bucket, fr. Ar. alÐq3⁄4dus the bucket, fr. Gr. ?, a water vessel. So an Arabic term form pelican is waterÐcarrier, as a bird carrying water in its pouch.] (Zo”l.) A web-footed bird, of the genus Diomedea, of which there are several species. They are the largest of sea birds, capable of longÐcontinued flight, and are often seen at great distances from the land. They are found chiefly in the southern hemisphere. ”

“ He held it very roughly, and a crowd of boys followed behind jeering at the strange, half-fledged creature, and sometimes pulling its tail or its legs and laughing when it opened its mouth in terror. Now the young man was angry that the bird should be so used, for he had read many books and thought many thoughts, and he knew that birds and beasts had feelings like other people. He pitied the poor frightened Pelican, and as one of the boys passed, he gave him a great cuff which nearly knocked him over. ”