Pelicans perching on poles

["Philip Veerman" <>]

I went to Batemans Bay this week (NSW SE coast, down from Canberra, for those not local). A thing that I noticed and usually have noticed there, is that the Pelicans really like to perch on light poles there. It seems to me a difficult and strange thing for such heavy birds to do. They can hardly be looking for food from there. Given that even birds like Galahs sometimes have difficulty perching on these rounded smooth steel structures and Pelicans don’t have gripping feet and they would need to achieve almost zero speed in flight to perch there. So is that a local habit or widespread? At San Remo near Phillip Island, there is a bit of a tourist attraction of feeding of Pelicans, but they fly in to the car park area, I did not notice them perching on poles.  Surprisingly a web search typing in “Pelicans perching on poles”  provided many pictures

https://www.google.com/search?q=pelicans+perching+on+poles&rlz=1C1GGRV_enAU751AU751&tbm=isch&tbo=u&source=univ&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwizxozjivnfAhXUTX0KHe3BAdQQsAR6BAgAEAE&biw=1280&bih=882

 

but these are mostly stumps or piers not high light poles. Many are Australian Pelicans and the American Brown Pelicans which I suspect is not so big.

 

Philip

 

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