Australian Pelican

Australian Pelican with inside-out pouch put over its body

Australian Pelicans - they are so common and big that they may have exhausted to get much of my photographic attention. I often only check if they are fine and free from fishing line entanglement and other damage. There is hardly any picture that I have not attempted or one that has not been pixelated yet.

Last week, this guy distracted me a bit while I was witnessing some beautiful Darter family action nearby (will write a blog post later). What looked horribly wrong to me, may have been a witness account of some value.




This Pelican obviously turned its pouch inside out, leaned its neck back and put the pouch over its body. Try that! Once I was pretty confident that this was real and the animal was fine, I saw the funny side of it. How cool is that? You can clearly see the veins on the pouch skin, too.

I had assumed that the Pelican was having the sun rid him of a few parasites or some bad, fishy breath. Maybe the drying air or sun was helping with healing a wound. A QuestaGame expert pointed out that the role of their gular pouches to help in cooling is known. Maybe it was reverse engineering and the Pelican was trying to warm up. We have cold nights in Brisbane at the moment and I couldn't blame the Pelican for not caring about its silly 'pouched-over' looks.

This is certainly a photo that deserves to be on my website, maybe not for photographic quality (it was quite far away) but documentation of a rarely documented behaviour.

Hopefully, you'll enjoy.