Head to head
Pelican vs Cormorant
Pelicans and cormorants often share the same lakes, coasts, and colony islands, and both make their living catching fish, but they go about it in completely different ways and are easy to tell apart once you know what to look for.
| Pelican | Cormorant | |
|---|---|---|
| Size | Very large; wingspan to ~3 m | Medium; wingspan ~1 to 1.5 m |
| Bill | Long, with an elastic throat pouch | Medium, hooked at the tip |
| Plumage | Mostly white or grey | Dark brown to black, often glossy |
| Fishing method | Scoops at the surface; brown pelican plunge-dives | Dives and chases fish underwater with its feet |
| After fishing | Rests, drains and swallows the catch | Perches with wings spread to dry |
| In flight | Soars on broad flat wings | Fast direct wingbeats low over the water |
| Feathers | Waterproof | Partly wettable by design, to aid diving |
| Species | About 8 | About 40 |
Pelican vs Cormorant: common questions
How can you tell a pelican from a cormorant at a distance?
Size and colour usually settle it. A pelican is a very large, mostly pale bird that flies with slow, deliberate wingbeats or soars on broad flat wings, often in a line or a V, with its head drawn back on its shoulders. A cormorant is a smaller, dark, almost black-looking bird that flies fast and straight, low over the water, with quick wingbeats and its neck held out with a slight kink. On the water a pelican rides high and buoyant with its big bill obvious, while a cormorant sits low, often with just its head and neck showing, and dives with a little forward roll. A dark bird standing on a post with its wings held open is a cormorant, never a pelican.
Do pelicans and cormorants compete for fish?
They overlap but mostly avoid direct competition by fishing differently. Pelicans take fish from the top metre or so of open water, often in the shallows and often cooperatively, while cormorants dive deeper and chase fish among rocks, weed, and structure that a pelican cannot reach. In some places the two even work together loosely, with cormorants driving fish up toward the surface where pelicans and other birds pick them off. Both are blamed by anglers and fish farmers for eating valuable fish, and cormorants in particular are culled in some regions, but on natural waters their combined effect on fish populations is usually minor next to overfishing and habitat loss.
Are pelicans and cormorants related?
Yes, fairly closely. Both belong to the order Pelecaniformes as it is now defined, along with herons, ibises, the hamerkop, and the shoebill, and both are also part of a broader group of fish-eating waterbirds that includes gannets, boobies, frigatebirds, and the anhingas or darters. The cormorants sit closest to the anhingas, which are essentially slimmer, spear-fishing versions of cormorants. Pelicans are a little more distant within the group and sit in their own family, the Pelecanidae. Their shared ancestry shows in details like the fully webbed feet, in which all four toes are joined by webbing, a feature called totipalmate.