Birds
Great White Pelican
Pelecanus onocrotalus · also called great white pelican, eastern white pelican
The great white pelican carries a stretchy throat pouch that holds more than its own stomach, and one of the widest wingspans of any bird alive. Groups sometimes work together, herding fish into the shallows before scooping them up in unison.
Overview
Great white pelicans live across scattered wetlands, lakes, and coastal lagoons of southeastern Europe, Africa, and Asia. Up to 1.8 m long with a 3.6 m wingspan, they scoop fish along with water into a huge throat pouch, draining the excess before swallowing.
Hunting as a team
Groups form a line or semicircle, beating their wings to herd fish into shallow water, then scoop up multiple fish together — far more efficient than fishing alone.
An efficient soaring flier
Despite its bulk, it rides thermal updrafts to soar for hours with minimal effort, often migrating in large, coordinated flocks.
Status
The great white pelican is Least Concern, widespread and generally stable, though sensitive to wetland drainage and disturbance in some regions.
Great White Pelican: common questions
How big is the great white pelican's throat pouch?
Its stretchy, expandable throat pouch, technically called a gular pouch, can hold roughly 13 litres of water when fully extended during a feeding scoop, a volume considerably larger than the bird's own stomach can actually accommodate. This means that after scooping up a mouthful containing fish along with a large amount of water, the pelican must tilt its bill down and press the pouch against its neck and chest to drain the excess water back out through the sides of its bill before it can tip its head back and swallow the remaining fish whole, a process that takes only a few seconds but is essential to how the whole feeding method works.
How do great white pelicans hunt cooperatively?
Rather than fishing alone the way many other fish-eating birds do, groups of great white pelicans frequently coordinate their movements while foraging, forming a line or a loose semicircle on the water's surface and beating their wings against the water to actively drive schools of fish into a smaller area, often pushing them into shallower water near a shoreline. Once the fish are concentrated and effectively trapped, the pelicans can dip their bills in together, each scooping up a large pouchful of fish at once, a strategy that is considerably more efficient per bird than solitary hunting, particularly when fish are naturally dispersed and hard to catch individually.
How does the great white pelican fly so efficiently despite its size?
Its very large wingspan, among the widest of any flying bird alive, combined with a relatively light, largely hollow-boned skeleton for its size, allows it to generate considerable lift with minimal effort, and it makes extensive use of thermal updrafts and other rising air currents to soar for long stretches with very little active wingbeating. During migration, great white pelicans typically travel in large, well-coordinated flocks, often flying in a distinctive V-formation or a loose line that reduces individual air resistance, allowing the whole group to cover long distances between breeding and wintering areas with relatively low overall energy expenditure.
Where do great white pelicans breed and why in such large colonies?
They breed in dense colonies, sometimes numbering many thousands of pairs, almost always on isolated islands, remote sandbanks, or hard-to-reach wetland sites that offer significant protection from ground-based predators such as foxes and jackals that would otherwise threaten eggs and flightless chicks. Nesting in such large, tightly packed groups also provides collective benefits including shared vigilance against aerial predators like eagles, and the sheer scale of some of the largest colonies, located across parts of southeastern Europe, Africa, and Asia, makes them among the most impressive concentrations of any large waterbird species anywhere in the world.