📷 Extraordinary Birds for SMaP: Pelicans

Hello everyone! Today I want to show you some photos of unusual birds for me — for the Show Me A Photo Contest Round 179 by @nelinoeva in the Feathered Friends community.

So, these are pelicans. I don't know how often you see pelicans in person, whether you've had the opportunity to look closely at their beaks, especially when they're feeding. For me, they are quite exotic birds, the first time I saw them up close was on the coast of Chile, and they really amazed me. In fact, I took these photos there. On the coast of Chile they are quite accustomed to people, in some places they even walk around fishermen and fish stalls without any hesitation.

So, to the question of what is extraordinary about these birds, in my opinion. Firstly, it is their rather large size, especially if you look at the wingspan in flight: the Peruvian pelican (I think I photographed individuals of this species) reaches 1.5 meters in length, and the wingspan can be up to 2.3-2.5 m.

Secondly, it is the size of the beak of these birds — it is very long, even if you look not only at the absolute size, but also at the ratio of its length to the length of the entire body.

Thirdly, and this is the most important thing for me, the structure of the beak itself. On the underside of the beak, pelicans have a very large, stretchable throat pouch, where the fish they catch are first placed, along with several liters of water, since they catch fish directly in the water. After catching the fish, the pelicans drain all the water from this throat pouch and only then swallow the fish.

In general, the appearance of a pelican with prey is very unusual and even somewhat alien: the narrow lower half of the beak diverges to the sides, becoming a couple of times wider than the upper half due to the stretching pouch, which also sags much lower if the pelican has caught a large fish or there is a lot of water in its pouch along with the prey.

Unfortunately, I can't illustrate the feeding process with my own photos, so far I haven't been lucky enough to photograph pelicans while they are eating, but you can look on the Internet or, for example, here :) Well, I limit myself to the photos that I took myself, as always, in which pelicans appear as beautiful, but unusual birds with long beaks and graceful curved necks.

I hope you liked them!