Bird books tell us that brown pelicans are supposed to range from New Jersey to Venezuela and British Columbia to Chile depending on which U.S. coast they live on. Louisiana's brown pelicans died out in the 1950s so the ones you can see today are reintroductions from Florida. Texas brown pelicans had dwindled into the 1970s but have been rebuilding.
On Fishermans Island, which you drive through on the highway that takes you to (south) or from (north) the Chesapeake Bay Bridge-Tunnel, the pelican population has risen from three in 1988 to more than 1,000 today. Although you don't get a chance to stop off and gawk on this drive-through island, apparently brown pelicans are common enough in the region to make bird watchers happy in Virginia's Hampton Roads, Virginia Beach and Portsmouth areas to the south on the opposite side of the bay. If you've been there, then you know it's one heckuva big body of water.
Brown pelicans haven't always been so successful. It wasn't until DDT was banned that the number of hatchlings began to rise in Florida. Occasionally birds still suffer at the hands of humans when fish hooks get caught in their bills and feet, or they get tangled in fishing line, but breeding success is, well, successful.
As anyone who has seen these birds knows, they are a treat to watch whether they are flying, diving or eating. As with most large birds that look ungainly on land, these birds literally soar in the air. It is hard to take your eyes off a group as it skims along the ocean just above the waves. Even a change in wave height doesn't throw them off — they never get their wing tips wet.
Watching them fish, however, is the real treat. They're dive bombers. When they spot a target, they keep their eyes on it while twisting their bodies for a better angle. Finally, BAM! they hit the water. But there's more ballet that we don't see. Under water the birds open their large bills to scoop up a fish in their expandable lower bill's pouch, along with a couple of gallons of water.
In a number of fishing ports along the coasts, particularly where sport-fishing
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