This American White Pelican is a winter visitor to the Bolsa Chica Ecological Reserve in Huntington Beach California. I captured a squadron of these beautiful birds on a sandbar in the middle of the reserve. This behavior with their wings spread is commonly described as "sunbathing" or "wing-drying. They spend winters mainly on coastal waters, bays, and estuaries, or a little distance inland.
This adult Brown Pelican along with an Immature Brown Pelican was resting in the water at the Bolsa Chica Ecological Reserve in Huntington Beach California. Adults are large, grayish-brown birds with long, pouched bills. They have a white or yellowish head and dark body. Immature birds are dark with a white belly. This is a common protective pattern. It blends the animal into either the sky or the ocean/ground.
The Brown Pelican is a comically elegant bird with an oversized bill, sinuous neck, and big, dark body. I captured this bird taking flight after feeding on fish in the Bolsa Chica Ecological Reserve waterway near Huntington Beach, California. On the Pacific Coast, Brown Pelican adults have red skin on their throats in the breeding season as you can see by this photo. On the Atlantic and Gulf Coasts, Brown Pelicans are slightly smaller and their throat skin is greenish black.
