Pelikan is a large water bird genus that forms the family Pelecanidae . They are characterized by a long beak and a large throat bag used to catch prey and drain the water from the chipped contents before ingestion. They have very pale fur, the exception is the brown pelican and Peruvian. The bills, pockets, and bare facial skin of all species become brightly colored before the breeding season. Eight live pelicans have an equally distributed global distribution, ranging from the tropics to temperate zones, although they are absent in the interior of South America and from the polar regions and open oceans.
Long considered related to frigatebirds, cormorants, tropicbirds, and gannets and boobies, pelicans are now known to be most closely associated with shoebill and hamerkop, and are placed within the framework of Pelecaniformes. Ibises, spoonbills, herons, and integral bitterns have been classified in the same order. The fossil evidence of pelicans dates back at least 30 million years to the remnants of the beak which are very similar to the modern species recovered from the Oligocene layer in France. They are considered to have evolved in the Old World and spread to the Americas; this is reflected in the relationships within the genus as the eight species divide into the Old World and the New world line.
Pelicans are often in the interior and coastal waters, where they feed primarily on fish, catch them on or near the water surface. They are gregarious birds, wandering in groups, cooperative hunting, and colonial breeding. Four white species tend to nest in the soil, and four species of brown or gray feathered nest especially in the trees. The relationship between pelicans and people is often a debate. The birds have been persecuted because of the competition they perceive with commercial and recreational fishing. Their populations have fallen through habitat destruction, disturbance, and environmental pollution, and three species of conservation concern. They also have a long history of cultural significance in mythology, and in iconoconic and Christian iconography.
Video Pelican
Taxonomy and systematics
Etymology
The genus Taxonomy
The Pelecanidae family was introduced (as Pelicanea) by French polymath Constantine Samuel Rafinesque in 1815. Pelikan gave their name to Pelecaniformes, an order that had a varied taxonomic history. Tropicbirds, darters, cormorants, gannets, boobies, and frigatebirds, all members of the traditional order, have been reclassified: tropicbirds into their own order, Phaethontiformes, and the rest to Suliformes. In their place, herons, ibises, spoonbills, hamerkop, and shoebill have now been moved to Pelecaniformes. Molecular evidence suggests that shoebill and hamerkop form sister groups into pelicans, although there are doubts about the exact relationship between the three lineages.
Live species
Eight extinct species of pelicans are traditionally divided into two groups, one containing four ground-nesters with mainly white adult fur (Australia, Dalmatian, large white, and white American pelicans), and one containing four species of gray or brown-feathered which are nesting preferentially in trees (pink launchers, spot pelicans and chocolates), or on marine rocks (Peruvian pelican). The pelicans of most of the brown and Peruvian seas, previously considered a kind, are sometimes separated from others by placement in Leptopelicanus subgenus but in reality species with both types of appearance and nesting behavior are found in good.
DNA sequencing of both mitochondria and nuclear genes produces quite different relationships; three New World pelicas formed a lineage, with white American pelican sisters for two brown pelicans, and five other Old World species. The Dalmatian, pink-backed, and spot-billed are all closely related to each other, while the Australian white pelican is their next closest relative. The great white pelican also belongs to this lineage, but is the first to deviate from the common ancestor of the other four species. These findings indicate that pelicans evolved in the Old World and spread to the Americas, and the preference for tree or ground nests was more related to size than genetics.
Fossil record
The fossil record shows that the pelican lineage has existed for at least 30 million years; the oldest known pelican fossils found in the early Oligocene deposits at Luberon in southeastern France, and are very similar to modern forms. Its beak is almost complete and morphologically identical to today's pelicans, suggesting that this sophisticated cutlery was present at the time. Early Miocene Fossils have been named Miopelecanus gracilis on the basis of certain features that were originally considered unique, but were later considered to be within the range of interspecific variations in Pelecanus . Final Eocene Protopelicanus may be pelecaniform or suliform - or the same water bird as pseudotooth (Pelagornithidae). The former Miocene peliter Liptornis from Patagonia is dubium nomen (validity in doubt), which is based on fragments that provide insufficient evidence to support a valid description.
The fossil findings from North America are very few compared to Europe, which has a richer fossil record. Some species of Pelecanus have been described from fossil materials, including:
- Pelecanus cadimurka , Rich & amp; van Tets, 1981 (End of Pliocene, South Australia)
- Pelecanus cautleyi , Davies, 1880 (Early Pliocene, Siwalik Hills, India)
- Pelecanus fraasi , Lydekker, 1891 (Central Miocene, Bavaria, Germany)
- Pelecanus gracilis , Milne-Edwards, 1863 (Early Miocene, France) (see: Miopelecanus )
- Pelecanus halieus , Wetmore, 1933 (End of Pliocene, Idaho, USA)
- Pelecanus intermedius , Fraas, 1870 (Central Miocene, Bavaria, Germany) (transferred to Miopelecanus by Cheneval in 1984)
- Pelecanus odessanus , Widhalm, 1886 (Miocene End, near Odessa, Ukraine)
- Pelecanus schreiberi , Olson, 1999 (Early Pliocene, North Carolina, USA)
- Pelecanus sivalensis , Davies, 1880 (Early Pliocene, Siwalik Hills, India)
- Pelecanus tirarensis , Miller, 1966 (End of Oligocene to Middle Miocene, South Australia)
Maps Pelican
Description
Pelicans are very large birds with very long bills that are characterized by hooks down on the tip of the upper jaw, and the attachment of a very large bag of sugar down. The sleek rami of lower bills and flexible tongue muscles form bags into baskets to catch fish, and sometimes rainwater, though it does not preclude swallowing large fish, the tongue itself is small. They have long necks and short, dashing legs with big, fully webbed feet. Although they are among the heaviest flying birds, they are relatively mild because of their clear bulk because of air pockets in the skeleton and under the skin, allowing them to float high in the water. The tail is short and square. The wings are long and wide, perfect for flying and gliding, and have large numbers of 30 to 35 exceptional secondary flight feathers.
Men are generally bigger than women and have longer bills. The smallest species is a brown pelican, a small individual that can be no more than 2.75 kg (6.1 lb) and 1.06 m (3.5 ft) long, with a wingspan of only 1.83 m (6.0 ft). The largest is believed to be Dalmatian, up to 15 kg (33 Ib) and 1.83 m (6.0 ft) in length, with a maximum wingspan of 3 m (9.8 ft). Australian pelican bills can grow up to 0.5 m (1.6 ft) in a large male, the longest bird.
Pelicans have particularly light-colored feathers, the exception being brown pelicans and Peruvians. Bills, pockets, and bare facial skin of all species become brighter before the breeding season begins. The California subspecies' throat pouch from the brown pelican turns bright red, and fades to yellow after the egg is laid, while the Peruvian pelician's pericarp pouch turns blue. The white American pelican grew the prominent button on the bill that was shed so the females had laid the eggs. Adult pelicans are darker than adults. Newly hatched chicks are naked and pink, dark to gray or black after 4 to 14 days, then develop a white or gray hood down.
airbag
The anatomy dissection of two brown pelicans in 1939 showed that pelicans had a network of subcutaneous air sacs under their skin located along the ventral surface including the throat, breast, and underside of the wings, and had airbags on their bones. The air sac is connected to the air passages of the respiratory system, and the pelicans can keep the air sacs elevated by closing the glottis, but how the air sac increases is not clear. The air sac serves to keep the pelican highly floated in the water and also can protect the impact of pelicans on the surface of the water as they dive from the flight into the water to catch fish. Superficial airbags can also help round out the contours of the body (especially on the abdomen, where the surface bulge can be caused by the size and position of the viscous change) to allow the feather on it to form more effective heat insulation and also to allow the feathers to be held in position for good aerodynamics.
Distribution and habitat
Modern pelicans are found on all continents except Antarctica. They mainly inhabit warm areas, although breeding ranges extend to the latitude of 45 ° South (Australian pelicans in Tasmania) and 60 ° North (white American pelicans in western Canada). Birds in inland and coastal waters, they are not in the polar regions, the deep ocean, the oceanic islands (except the Galapagos), and the mainland of South America, as well as from the eastern coast of South America from the Amazon River estuary to the south. Subfossil bones have been found from the south as far south as New Zealand Island, although their scarcity and isolated incidents indicate that these remnants may be just homeless from Australia (as it is today).
Behavior and ecology
Pelicans swim with their strong legs and their webbed feet. They rub the back of their heads in their pear glands to take a greasy secretion, which they transfer into their feathers for waterproof. Holding their wings only loosely against their bodies, pelicans float with relatively little of their bodies beneath the surface of the water. They remove excess heat with flabby gular - stirring the skin of the throat and pouch with open bills to promote evaporative cooling. They perched and lounged together on the beach, sand dunes, and in shallow waters.
The fibrous layer deep within the breast muscle can hold the horizontal rigid wings to slide and soar. Thus, they use thermal to soar to a height of 3000 m (10,000 ft) or more, combined both by sliding and by flapping the flight in the V formation, to change the distance up to 150 km (93 mi) into the dining area. Pelicans also fly low (or "skim") over the water, using a phenomenon known as soil effect to reduce barriers and increase lift. As the air flows between the wing and the water surface, it is compressed to a higher density and gives a stronger upward force against the birds above. Therefore, substantial energy is stored while flying.
Adult pelicans depend on the visual and behavioral display to communicate, especially using their wings and bills. Agonistic behavior consists of thrusting and bullying the opponent with their bills, or lifting and waving their wings in a threatening manner. The adult pelican groans when in the colony, but generally stays elsewhere or outside the breeding season. In contrast, the colonies are very noisy, like many vocal chicks.
Breeding and lifetime
The pelican is clustered and colonized nesting. Couples are monogamous for one season, but the couple ties only extend into the nesting area; independent couple away from the hive. The nesting species (white) have a complex communal courtship involving a group of men chasing one woman in the air, on land, or in the water pointing, gaping, and thrusting their bills to each other. They can complete the process in a day. Tree-nesting species have a much simpler process in which male roosts advertise females. The location of the nursery colony is constrained by the availability of a large supply of fish to eat, although pelicans can use thermal to float and commute hundreds of kilometers each day to pick up food.
Pelican Australia has two reproductive strategies depending on the local level of environmental predictability. Colonies of tens or hundreds, rarely thousands, breed regularly on small island islands and subcoastal where food is available seasonally or permanently. In inland Australian interior, especially in the endorheic Lake Eyre basin, pelicans proliferate in an enormous amount of up to 50,000 pairs, when unusually large floods, which may be years apart, fill up the salt lake and provide large amounts of food for several months before it dries again.
In all species, copulation occurs in the nest site; starting shortly after pairing and continuing for 3-10 days before laying. Men carry nesting materials, in land-nesting species (which may not build nests) occasionally in bags, and in tree-nested species across the bill. Women then stock up the material to form a simple structure.
The eggs are oval, white, and coarse textured. All species usually have at least two eggs; the usual clutch size is one to three, rarely up to six. Both sexes incubate with eggs above or below the feet; they can be displayed when changing shift. Incubation takes 30-36 days; the success of hatching for an unaffected partner can be as high as 95%, but because of siblicide or siblicide competition, usually all but one nestling dies within the first few weeks (later in pink and spot-billed supported species). Both parents feed their children. Small chicks are fed with regurgitation; after about a week, they can put their heads in their parents' pockets and feed themselves. Sometimes before, or especially after, being fed, they may appear to have a seizure that ends with fainting; the reason is not known clearly.
Parents of nesting species on the ground sometimes drag the younger children around roughly by the head before feeding them. From about 25 days old, young people from this species gather in "pods" or "crÃÆ'¨ches" to 100 birds where parents recognize and feed only their own offspring. By 6-8 weeks they hang around, occasionally swimming, and can practice communal eating. Young people of all species live 10-12 weeks after hatching. They may remain with their parents afterwards, but are now rarely or never fed. They mature at the age of three or four years. The success of breeding as a whole varies greatly. Pelicans live for 15 to 25 years in the wild, although one reaches the age of 54 years in captivity.
Feed
Pelicans usually consist of fish, but occasionally amphibians, turtles, crustaceans, insects, birds, and mammals are also eaten. The size of the preferred prey fish varies depending on the species and location of the pelican. For example, in Africa, supported pink pelicans generally take fish ranging in size up to 400 g (0.9 pounds) and large white pelicans prefer larger fish, up to 600 g (1.3 pounds), but in Europe , the last species has been recorded to fish up to 1.850 g (4.1 pounds). In the deep waters, white pelicans often fish themselves. Near the beach, some circle around a small fish school or form a line to push them into the shallows, hitting their wings on the surface of the water and then scooping prey. Although all pelican species can feed in groups or alone, Dalmantian, pink, and spot-billed pelicans are the only ones who prefer to eat alone. When fishing in groups, all pelican species have been known to work together to capture their prey, and Dalmantian pelicans can even work with large cormorant birds. They catch a few small fish by extending the bag of throat, which should be dried over the water surface before swallowing. This operation takes up to a minute, during which time other seabirds can steal the fish.
The big fish was caught with the tip-bills, then thrown into the air to be caught and slid into the throat's head. A seagull will occasionally stand on the pelican head, peck it to distract, and take the fish off the open bill. Pelicans in turn occasionally snatch prey from other aquatic birds.
Pelican chocolate usually dives the first head for its prey, from a height of 10-20 m (33-66 ft), mainly for anchovy and menhaden. The only other pelicans to be fed using a similar technique are Peruvian pelicans, but the dives are usually of a lower altitude than the chocolate pelicans. Australian and American white pelicans can feed with a low plunge of first-footfall and then scoop up prey with beaks, but they - as well as the species of pelicans are left - mainly feed while swimming on the water. Water prey is most often taken at or near the water surface. Though basically a fish eater, Australian pelican is also an eclectic and opportunistic eater and carnivore feeding in landfill locations, as well as picking up carcasses and "anything from small insects and crustaceans to ducks and small dogs". Food is not stored in a pelican throat bag, contrary to popular folklore.
The great white pelican has been observed swallowing the city pigeons at St James's Park in London. Spokesperson for Royal Parks Louise Wood argues that feeding on other birds is more likely with prison pelicans living in semiurban neighborhoods and always closely related to humans. However, in southern Africa, eggs and Cape cormorant chicks are an important food source for large white pelicans. Several other bird species have been recorded in this pelican diet in South Africa, including Cape gannet on Malgas Island as well as crown cormoran, seaweed seagulls, large crested animals, and African penguins on Dassen Island and elsewhere. Pelican Australia, which is particularly willing to take a variety of prey goods, has been noted to feed the young Australian whites, and young and adult gray and silver seagulls. The chocolate pelicans have been reported to undermine the young general murillas in California and eggs and big cow and beet nests in Baja California, Mexico. The Peruvian Pelican in Chile has been recorded feeding on shroud nests, teen petrel teenagers, and gray seagulls. Chicken cannibalism of their own species is known from Australian, brown, and Peruvian pelicans.
Status and preservation
Population
Globally, pelican populations are influenced by these key factors: decreased stocks of fish through overfishing or water pollution, habitat destruction, immediate effects of human activities such as disturbance to egg-laying colonies, hunting and destruction, fishing windings and hooks, and the presence of pollutants such as DDT and endrin. The population of most species is more or less stable, although three are classified by IUCN as being at risk. All species multiply easily in zoos, potentially useful for conservation management.
The combined population of brown pelicans and Peru is estimated at 650,000 birds, with about 250,000 in the United States and the Caribbean, and 400,000 in Peru. The National Audubon Society estimates the global population of brown pelican at 300,000. The number of brown pelicans dropped dramatically in the 1950s and 1960s, largely as a consequence of DDT's environmental pollution, and the species was listed as endangered in the US in 1970. With restrictions on US use of DDT from 1972, the population has recovered, and it was abolished in 2009.
Peruvian Pelican is listed as almost threatened because, although the population is estimated by BirdLife International to exceed 500,000 adult individuals, and possibly increase, it has been much higher in the past. This declined dramatically during the El Nià ± o event of 1998 and may experience a similar decline in the future. Conservation needs include regular monitoring across the entire range to determine population trends, especially after El NiÃÆ' ± o years, limiting human access to important breeding colonies, and assessing interaction with fisheries.
Billy's place-pelican has an estimated population of between 13,000 and 18,000 and is considered almost endangered in the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species. The amount decreased substantially during the 20th century, one of the important factors was the eradication of important Sittaung valley breeding colonies in Burma through deforestation and loss of food. The main threats he faces are from habitat loss and human disturbance, but the population has largely stabilized following increased protection in India and Cambodia.
The supported pink pelicans have large populations scattered throughout most of sub-Saharan Africa. In the absence of substantial threats or substantial evidence of decline across the board, its conservation status is rated as the least noticeable. Regional threats include wetland drainage and increased disturbance in southern Africa. This species is susceptible to bioaccumulation of toxins and destruction of nested trees by logging.
The American white pelican has increased in number, with an estimated population of more than 157,000 birds in 2005, becoming more eastern in dividing the continent, while decreasing in the west. However, whether the number has been affected by exposure to pesticides is unclear, as it also loses habitat through wetland drainage and competition with the use of lake and river recreation.
The great white pelican covers a large area in Africa and south Asia. The overall trend in numbers is uncertain, with an increasing mixture of regional populations, declining, stable, or unknown, but no evidence has been found about the overall decline rapidly, and the status of species is rated as the least noticeable. Threats include wetland drainage, maltreatment and sports hunting, disturbance in nursery colonies, and contamination by pesticides and heavy metals.
Pelican Dalmatian has an estimated population of between 10,000 and 20,000 after a massive decline in the 19th and 20th centuries. Major ongoing threats include hunting, particularly in eastern Asia, disruptions, coastal development, collisions with overhead power lines, and over-exploitation of fish stocks. This species is listed almost threatened by the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species because of the declining population trends, especially in Mongolia, where it is almost extinct. However, some European colonies grow larger and the largest colonies for this species, in Small Prespa Lake in Greece, have reached about 1,400 breeding pairs after conservation measures.
Widespread in Australia, Australian pelican has a predominantly estimated population of between 300,000 and 500,000 individuals. The overall population fluctuates widely and erratically depending on wetland conditions and successful breeding across the continent. This species is rated as the least noticeable.
Destruction and interruption
Pelicans have been persecuted by humans because of the competition they feel for fish, despite the fact that their diets overlap only with fish caught by humans. Beginning in the 1880s, American white pelicans were beaten and shot, their eggs and young were deliberately destroyed, and their eating and nesting grounds were degraded by water management schemes and wetland drainage. Even in the 21st century, an increase in the white American pelicans population in southeastern Idaho in the US is seen threatening the cruel trout fishing there, leading to an official effort to reduce the number of pelicans through systematic harassment and destruction.
The great white pelican on Dyer Island, in the South West Cape region, was destroyed during the 19th century because of their predation of eggs and seabirds producing guano visible threatening the livelihoods of guano collectors. More recently, such predation in South African seabird colonies has affected the conservation of threatened seabird populations, especially crown cormoran birds, Cape birds, and cormoran banks. This led to suggestions that pelican numbers should be controlled on vulnerable colonies.
In spite of intentional and targeted destruction of habitats and torture, pelicans are vulnerable to disturbance in their nursery colonies by birdwatchers, photographers and other curious visitors. Human presence alone can cause birds to accidentally move or destroy their eggs, allowing children to hatch predators and bad weather, or even leave their colonies completely.
Poisoning and pollution
Environmental DDT contamination is a major cause of decreased pelican brown population in North America in the 1950s and 1960s. It enters the ocean food web, contaminates and accumulates in several species, including one of the main pelicans food fish - the northern anchovy. DDE metabolites are reproductive toxins in pelicans and many other birds, causing the eggshell to thinned and weakened, resulting in breeding failure through eggs accidentally destroyed by birds of contemplation. Due to an effective ban on the use of DDT implemented in the US in 1972, the eggshells of brown pelicans breeding there have thicken and their populations have largely recovered.
In the late 1960s, following a large decline in the number of pelican chocolates in Louisiana from DDT poisoning, 500 pelicans were imported from Florida to add and rebuild the population; more than 300 died in April and May 1975 due to poisoning by endrin pesticides. Approximately 14,000 pelicans, including 7500 white American pelicans, died of botulism after eating fish from the Salton Sea in 1990. In 1991, the number of brown pelvic and cormorant Brandt died in Santa Cruz, California, when their fish (anchovies) were contaminated with acids domoic neurotoxic, produced by diatoms Pseudo-nitzschia .
As aquatic birds that feed on fish, pelicans are particularly vulnerable to oil spills, either directly oiled and by the impact on their dietary sources. A 2007 report to the California Fish and Game Commission estimates that over the previous 20 years, about 500-1000 chocolate pelicans have been affected by the oil spill in California. The 2011 report by the Center for Biodiversity, a year after the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in April 2010, said 932 chocolate pelicans had been collected after being affected by oiling and estimated that 10 times that amount had been disadvantaged by the spill.
Where pelicans interact with fishermen, either through sharing the same waters or looking for fishing, they are particularly vulnerable to addiction and entangled in the line of active and discarded fishing. Fish hooks are swallowed or captured in the skin of pockets or webbed feet, and strong monofilament fishing rods can be wound around the beak, wings, or legs, resulting in crippling, starvation, and often death. Local rescue organizations have been established in North America and Australia by volunteers to treat and rehabilitate injured pelicans and other wildlife.
Parasites and diseases
Like other bird families, pelicans are susceptible to various parasites. The special feather lice of the genus Piagetella are found in the pockets of all pelican species, but are otherwise known only from New World and Antarctic cormorans. Avian malaria is carried by Culex pipens mosquitoes, and the high density of these biting insects can force the pelican colony to be abandoned. Leeches can be attached to the hole or sometimes the inside of the bag. A study of white pelican parasites found 75 different species, including tapeworms, worms, flies, lice, lice, and nematodes. Much of this is not a little dangerous, but flies can engage in nest death, especially if they are weak or unhealthy, and the soft tick marks Ornithodoros capensis sometimes causes adults to leave their nests. Many pelicans are found in other bird groups, but some are very host specific.
Healthy pelicans can usually overcome their lice, but sick birds can carry hundreds of individuals, which speeds up their deaths. The bag bag Piagetiella peralis , which occurs in the bag, so can not be removed by preening, is usually not a serious problem, even when present in the amount that covers the inside of the bag, but sometimes inflammation and bleeding may be harmful host. Pelican chocolate has the same parasitic range. Nematodes Contracaecum multipapillatum and C. mexicanum and trematoda Ribeiroia ondatrae have caused illness and death in the Puerto Rican population, possibly endangering pelicans on the island. In May 2012, hundreds of Peruvian pelicans were reportedly killed in Peru due to a combination of hunger and wrist infestation.
Religion, mythology, and popular culture
Pelican ( henet in Egypt) was associated in ancient Egypt with death and the afterlife. It is depicted in art on the walls of the grave, and depicted in funeral texts, as a symbol of protection against snakes. Henet is also referred to in the Pyramid Texts as "king's mother" and hence seen as a goddess. References in the non-parony burial papyri show that pelicans are believed to have the ability to prophesy a safe passage in the underworld for a deceased person.
Consumption of pelican fish, like other seabirds, is considered illegal as an unclean animal, and is therefore prohibited in Jewish dietary laws.
The Murri-based myth of Queensland, cited by Andrew Lang, illustrates how Australian pelicans acquired their black and white feathers. Pelicans, formerly blackbirds, made canoe during the flood to save the drowned. He fell in love with a woman he saved, but his friends and he deceived and escaped. Therefore the pelican prepares to fight against them by applying himself with white clay as a war paint. However, before he finished, another pelican, upon seeing a strange creature like a dappled, killed him with his beak, and all such pelicans became black and white ever since.
The Moche people of ancient Peru worshiped nature. They place an emphasis on animals and often describe pelicans in their art.
Alcatraz Island is named by the Spaniards because of the large number of brown pelicans present. The word alcatraz itself comes from the Arabic al-caduos , a term used for water-carrying vessels and equated with pelican pouches. The albatross English name is also derived from Spanish word corruption.
Christianity
In medieval Europe, pelicans are thought to be very concerned about their children, to giving their own blood by injuring their own breasts when no other food is available. As a result, the pelicans came to symbolize the Passion of Jesus and the Eucharist, and took pictures of the lamb and the flag. A reference to this mystical characteristic is contained for example in singing by St. Thomas Aquinas, "Adoro te devote" or "Humbly We Adore Thee", in which in the second verse from the back, he describes Christ as "a loving divine pelican, capable of feeding from chest ". Elizabeth I of England adopted the symbol, describing herself as "the mother of the Church of England". Nicholas Hilliard painted a Pelican Portrait about 1573, now owned by Walker Art Gallery in Liverpool. The pelicans who feed their children are depicted in the oval panel at the bottom of the first edition title page (1611) of the King James Bible. Such a "pelican in his righteousness" appeared in 1686 reredos by Grinling Gibbons in the church of St. Mary Abchurch in the City of London. Early medieval examples of such motifs appear in a painted mural, for example from circa 1350 in the parish church of Belchamp Walter, Essex.
The aspect of self-sacrifice of the pelicans is reinforced by books read widely by the medieval. The "pelican instrument in his righteousness" or "vulgar pelican" (from Latin vulno , "to hurt") is "used in the symbol. The older version of the myth is that pelicans are used to kill their young children and then raise them with their blood, again analogous to Jesus' sacrifice. Likewise, folklore from India says that a pelician kills his young child with harsh treatment, but then deeply regrets that he raises them with his own blood.
The legend of self-injury and the provision of blood may appear because the impression of pelican sometimes gives that it stabbed itself with its bill. In fact, it often presses this to his chest to completely empty the pockets. Another possible derivation is the tendency of the bird to rest with the bill on his chest; Pelican Dalmatian has a red blood bag in the early breeding season and this may have contributed to the myth.
Heraldry
Pelicans have been widely used in symbols, generally using the pelican Christian symbolism as caring and self-sacrificing parents. Emerald images featuring "pelican vulning" refers to the pelicans who injure themselves, while "pelikan in piety" refers to the pelican woman who feeds her child with her own blood.
The image became associated with the medieval religious feast of Corpus Christi. The Universities of Oxford and Cambridge each have a college named for religious festivals closest to their date of establishment, and both Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, and Corpus Christi College, Oxford, display pelicans in their emblem.
The faculty of medicine Charles University in Prague also has pelican as their symbol. The symbol of the Irish Blood Transfusion Service is a pelicans, and for the most part in its existence, the service headquarters are located at Pelican House in Dublin, Ireland. The heraldic pelican also ends up as the name and image of the pub, though sometimes with the image of the Golden Hind ship. The famous ship Sir Francis Drake was originally called Pelican , and graced the halfpenny coins of England.
Modern usage
The great white pelican is a Romanian national bird. Pelican chocolate is a national bird of three Caribbean countries - Saint Kitts and Nevis, Barbados, and Sint Maarten - and features on their emblem. It is also a bird bird of the state of Louisiana, known as the Pelican State; the bird appears in the country flag and seal the country. It adorns the seals of Louisiana State University and Tulane University, and is the mascot of the New Orleans Pelicans NBA team, Tulane University, and the University of the West Indies. A white pelican logo is used by the Portuguese bank Montepio Geral, and the pelicans are depicted on the opposite of the Albania 1 lek coin, issued in 1996. The names and drawings are used for Pelican Books, a nonfiction book print published by Penguin Books. The seal from the Packer Collegiate Institute, the pelicans who feed their children, has been in use since 1885.
The Christian Democratic political party known as the American Solidarity Party uses pelican as a symbol of the beast, which touches on Catholic social teaching platforms.
Pelicans are the subject of the popular limerick originally conceived by Dixon Lanier Merritt in 1910 with some variations by other authors. The original version ran:
Note
References
Text cited
- Elliott, Andrew (1992). "Family Pelecanidae (Pelikan)". In del Hoyo, Josep; Elliott, Andrew; Sargatal, Jordi. World Bird Handbook, Volume 1: Ostriches to Ducks . Barcelona: Lynx Edicions. pp.Ã, 290-311. ISBN: 978-84-87334-10-8.
External links
- Definition of a pelican dictionary in Wiktionary
- Media related to Pelecanus on Wikimedia Commons
- Pelican Videos in Birds Bird Collection
Source of the article : Wikipedia
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