Brown Pelican feeding frenzy at Lake Merritt

[Lee Aurich]

20-30 brown pelicans converged on the Glen Echo end of Lake Merritt for second breakfast.   They actions suggest the Lake is healing (though not yet normal) from the August 2022 massive fish die-off.

Video plays in your browser window (difference is screen size) just over 1 minute:

HD, high resolution, 86 MB

https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/330mdgh30xxs8u9n171q6/2023-10-10.Brown.Pelicans.Diving.m4v?rlkey=bczbb8hjz59cd74w1iwptqvhp&dl=0

Tablet or phone, 24 MB

https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/8lrj25lvynblkhlvqdlpu/2023-10-10.Brown.Pelicans.Diving-720p.mp4?rlkey=5js3izf059ypa8g2vgqh2uqlw&dl=0

 Lee

[Sue Morgan]

Fantastic, Lee .. they looked like they were having fun.. it sure makes me happy to c it .. 

was this shot right from your deck ?? 

Thanks for taking & sharing .. 

Sue 

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[Patrice Anderson]

Thank you, Lee!

Best,

Patrice

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[Peter Volin]

Quite an amazing site, but weren't they white pelicans?

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[Hilary Powers]

On 10/10/2023 9:40 PM, Peter Volin wrote:

Quite an amazing site, but weren't they white pelicans?

Nope - White Pelicans swim and herd fish, dipping them up out of the water as they go. Only Brown Pelicans dive - but they're not really brown once they're grown up. All that white you see in the video is the heads and necks of the adult birds plus some light from their gray backs. The juveniles are brown as mice and we do see a lot of them here, but this year, quite a lot of the flock are it adult plumage.

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/tuesday4birds/246289936.8364963.1696999205830%40mail.yahoo.com.

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[H Keating]

Thanks, Lee, for the fun and instructive video.  You can see the fish stick their heads out of the water - cool!  Brown Pelicans are plunge divers and behave very differently from White Pelicans in order to get fish.

I'm surprised the cormorants weren't around. --hk

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