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Once you’ve seen it, you won’t forget the odd beauty of the pelican scanning the sea for its meal. When it flies, it resembles a prehistoric bird, with its broad wingspan and long beak.

Each flap of its 4-foot wings increases its velocity as the pelican sails through the air. When it spots its prey, far below in the water, it seems to stop in mid air. But only for a moment does the bird pause, because it suddenly drops like an anvil into the ocean. Once it does this dive-bomb, the pelican will pause to enjoy the fish it has caught and will soon return to the sky for another pass.

Pelicans can be colored white, especially when found in Africa and Southern Eurasia. The American white pelican has distinctive black tips on the end of its wings. These particular pelicans can be spotted breeding in the Western United States, though they migrate up into Canada and over to Florida for winter. Brown pelicans and Peruvian pelicans look a bit different, being brown instead of white. But they are pelicans just the same.

What gives the pelicans their prehistoric look is their very big wingspan (up to 10 feet.) When they flap their wings, you might think that a band of pterodactyls are on the hunt. Their enormous bills also attract attention, since an unusual pouch of skin dangles beneath the lower mandible. This skin pouch allows the pelicans to store fish that they have caught, which they will either eat later, or else serve to the youth of their pelican clan.

Not all pelicans dive from great heights to catch their food. Many gather into groups where they corral the fish they’ve found into shallower and shallower waters. Once the fish have been cornered, the pelicans eat them.

Since pelicans depend on fish for their livelihood, they need to have plenty of schools of fish swimming around. When humans catch too many of the fish in the sea, there are not enough remaining fish to feed the pelicans. This over-fishing has affected many members of the marine community. The fact that humans dump toxins into the water also makes survival very difficult for the pelican. Let’s try to keep our oceans clean and healthy so that we can enjoy watching those pelicans flying by the shore for many years to come.