Oh, a wonderful bird is the Pelican!

His bill can hold more than his belican.

He can take in his beak

Food enough for a week;

But I'm darned if I see how the helican.

- By Dixon Lanier Merritt (often incorrectly attributed to Ogden Nash)

It's been more than a decade since I visited the Carl R. Leonard Pelican Refuge at Riverside Reservoir east of Greeley, but I remember it like it was yesterday.

Not so much the sights or sounds, but rather the odor.

Pelican chicks too young to fly and too clumsy to run are easy prey for hordes of humans who actually have invaded their island to help them. But the chicks are in the dark about it all, and their only defense is to regurgitate their breakfasts when they're picked up.

The smell of that, mingled with the smell of the daily regurgitated fish-feeding of the young by their parents, has helped over time to kill off all the vegetation on the island, including three cottonwoods.

There is nothing like hundreds of stubby white birds upchucking at the same time to make you wonder why anyone would want to be a wildlife biologist in the first place.

Jim Dennis, an avian biologist with the Colorado Division of Wildlife who has been involved in banding pelicans since 1981, said the stomach contents he and his associates have examined include crayfish, salamanders, carp, chad and other rough fish, but very few game fish.

"Although we did find a kangaroo rat once," he said.

A moving cotton field

My visit to the refuge began on a warm July morning with four boatloads of college professors, wildlife biologists and bird enthusiasts who set off from the southern shore and tore across the reservoir toward the island, which pretty much is hidden from view on the western side.

With motors roaring and lake water spraying from the bows, as the boats approached the island thousands of California gulls took to the air screaming in protest followed by adult white pelicans, great blue herons, snowy egrets and double-breasted cormorants.

As the island became better defined, we saw a moving cotton field of terrified downy-white pelican chicks stumbling over one another trying to make it to the far side of the island and into the water to safety.

One boat quickly pulled around to herd them back to shore as the other boats dropped anchor and everyone bailed like Marines hitting the beach to take up positions surrounding the chicks and cutting off their escape routes.

Human hands were grabbing into the brood and snatching pelicans from the cluster to rush them to a group of kneeling biologist who were affixing silver numbered bands around the pelicans' legs.

Among them was Colorado State University wildlife biology professor emeritus Ronald Ryder who first started banding pelicans on the reservoir in 1962.

Movement

According to Alfred Bailey and Robert Niedrach in Birds of Colorado, white pelicans - not to be confused with brown pelicans, which are a different species and most-often seen along the seacoasts - migrate through the interior of the continent, and there are nesting colonies scattered from Utah, Nevada, Oregon, Yellowstone Lake, North and South Dakota into the Canadian provinces.

While they have migrated through Colorado for years, the state became more desirable as the larger irrigation reservoirs were dug on the eastern plains.

But it wasn't until a routine aerial waterfowl count May 29, 1962, by Norman Hughes and William Rutherford of the Colorado Division of Wildlife, that nesting pelicans were first spotted on a Riverside island.

Dr. Ryder and Jack Grieb, who later became director of the wildlife division, recorded 250 adult pelicans that reared about 60 young on the island that summer.

The population continued to prosper until the white pelican, the first bird placed on the state Endangered Species List in 1974, recovered sufficiently to be the first bird removed from the list a decade later.

In The Colorado's Wildlife Story by Pete Barrows and Judith Holmes, by 1975 almost a thousand birds had been banded, and tags were recovered from as far away as Alberta, Canada, and Veracruz, Mexico.

Dennis said the fact the pelicans at Riverside were successful is a story in itself.

"Problems arose in the late 1960s when wind and water eroded their island and it collapsed," he said. "Luckily, the birds took up new residence on another island about seven acres in size to the west of the original island where they are today.

"But that island has problems too and we had to put a concrete apron on the north side to keep it from breaking up and washing away as well. Now that apron needs repairs."

Dennis said they go out every year and band 100 young pelicans to track their migrations and ages if people return the band when a bird dies.

Dennis said at Riverside, the number of nesting pairs grew from 1981 to 1988, then leveled off at between 900 and 1,200 nesting pairs.

The pelicans, along with cormorants, gulls and great blue herons, do well on the island because most predators can't get to the young.

Since 1962, two more nesting colonies have been found in the state.

One, at Antero Reservoir in South Park, was doing well with about 300 nesting pairs until the reservoir was drained during the drought of 2002.

A second is on MacFarlane Reservoir northwest of Rand in North Park where there are 125 nesting pairs.

"We keep an eye on the birds because we worked hard to get them off the state's endangered list, and we want to keep them off," Dennis said.

Species profile

• Scientific name: Pelecanus erythrorhynchos.

• Description: 5 feet tall, wingspan 8-9 feet; 20 pounds; bright white plumage with black- tipped wings, enormous yellow bill, neck folded back in flight.

• Vocal: Seldom utter a sound, but when they do, it is a low, pig-like grunt.

• Habitat: Waterways, marshes, large reservoirs.

• Food: Mostly rough fish (carp, suckers), crawdads and some game fish such as crappie, sunfish, bass and trout.

• Nesting: In colonies. One to four white eggs are laid in low mound of earth and debris. During the breeding season a short, yellowish crest appears on the back of the head and a horny plate appears on the upper mandible. Drops off after mating. Egg incubation involves both parents and takes about 29 days. The chicks are born naked. At 10 days, the chicks are covered with thick, white downy feathers.

• Life span: 14-15 years, few up to 17 years.

• Range: Mackenzie, British Columbia, south to northern California. Wintering grounds from central California, the Gulf Coast, and Florida south to Panama.

• Best place to spot: Prewitt, Jumbo, Bonny and Old Windsor reservoirs; Barr Lake State Park south of Brighton; and Standley, Lower Church lakes in Westminster; and city park lakes in Front Range communities.

Sources: A Birder's Guide to Colorado by Harold Holt and James Lane; Colorado Bird Distribution Latilong Study by Colorado Division of Wildlife; Colorado Birds by Robert Andrews and Robert Righter; Audubon Society's Encyclopedia of North American Birds by John Terres; Birds of Colorado by Alfred Bailey & Robert Niedrach; Wildlife Viewing Guide by Mary Taylor Gray; Watchable Birds of the Rocky Mountains by Mary Taylor Gray; Colorado Wildlife by Jeff Rennicke; The Birder's Handbook by Paul Ehrlich, David Dobkin and Darryl Wheye; Pelican Stronghold by Bud Smith and Jim Dennis in Colorado Outdoors (May-June 1989).

Pelican primer

• Mealtime: Unlike their brown cousins found along the coasts, white pelicans don't dive from the air into the water for fish. Rather, they get in a line in shallow water and paddle toward shore herding rough fish such as carp and suckers before them. They then tip over to scoop the fish into their expandable bills.

• Baby food: Pelican chicks receive a special "chowder of the day" when their parents return from feeding and regurgitate the fish. The chicks feed directly from the adult's pouch like it is a bowl.

• Flying high: In flight, the white pelican has been likened to a flying sack of flour with a large head, and long bill, and extremely broad wingspan with black wingtips.

• Big mouth: The bill is the pelican's most remarkable physical characteristic with a large, expandable skin pouch suspended from the lower half. Using that pouch, the pelican is capable of scooping up 3 gallons of fish and water at a time and, then squeezes out the water and swallows the fish.

• Part-time residents: Pelicans come to Colorado in early April. The majority of the migration is here now, and they are nesting. They will leave again in September.

• The enemy: Despite being protected by the Migratory Bird Treaty of 1972, shooting by poachers is the largest known cause of mortality for adult white pelicans.

Sources: U.S. Fish And Wildlife Service; Mary Taylor Young; Seaworld-Busch Gardens Animal Information Database; Bcadventure.Com.

gerhardtg@RockyMountainNews.com or 303-892-5202

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