There were 20 migrating white pelicans on Lake Helen last week. The birds overwinter along the Gulf Coast and then nest in the northern Great Plains. They pass through Nebraska both during the spring and fall, and some even stick around all summer long. During migration, you can see large flocks of them circling and riding the thermals. They are graceful flyers.

The ones that stick around are not nesting, though nest colonies have been located in Nebraska in the past. They are colonial nesters that make their nest on the ground on shallow islands, laying two eggs.

The eggs are incubated for over two months before the chicks hatch. Usually, one chick will kill the other in a process called “siblicide” hence only one chick is produced each year.

Colonial nesters usually synchronize the nesting process and all the chicks hatch at about the same time. Strangely, shortly after killing their siblings, all the young chicks of the colony group together into “crèches” while the adults are out foraging for food.

When the adult returns with food the chicks cry and the parents can identify which chick is their chick.

While mostly white, pelicans are very colorful. The breeding adults have bright orange-red bills with a yellow plate that sticks up. When they fly the tips of their wings are black. There are seven other kinds of pelicans in the world, but only one other one, the brown pelican, is found in North America.

White pelicans have the third largest wingspan of a North American bird with the California condor as number two and the trumpeter swan as number one.

There is one problem with white pelicans. The white body and black wingtips are the same color pattern as that of another large bird, the whooping crane. At one time that was almost catastrophic for the cranes.

In the 1930’s and 40’s, biologists knew that whooping cranes were in trouble, but they didn’t know where they nested and they didn’t know exactly how many there were. UNL biologist Myron Swenk collected sighting records of migrating whooping cranes from people around the Kearney area. For example, in 1936 Swenk received a report of a flock of 65 whooping cranes flying over the Platte near Kearney. Based upon that and multiple other sightings he felt that the population of whooping cranes numbered near 300.

That was much higher than previous estimates and the concern for whooping cranes was diminished.

However, looking back we can see that at the time the 65 were reported from Kearney, there were actually less than 20 whooping cranes left in the wild!

The 65 birds, and most of the other sightings Swenk recorded, were pelicans. Not cranes. Fortunately biologists on the wintering grounds in Texas recognized that Swenk’s estimate was too high and efforts were started to save the cranes.

Today it is estimated that there are over 450,000 white pelicans and about 500 whooping cranes, so the laws of probability are that if you see large white birds with black wingtips flying in lazy circles, they are pelicans.