![\"white-pelican-7296\"](\"http:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/06\/white-pelican-7296.jpg\" "\\"white-pelican-7296\\"")
<\/a><\/em><\/p>\nCanon 7D, 1\/5000, f\/6.3, ISO 500<\/em><\/p>\nHowever, these birds are also fully capable of pulling the bottom of their pouch up above the level of the lower mandibles without\u00a0<\/em>having to pull the pouch down over their neck.\u00a0\u00a0 I don’t fully understand how they’re able to do this since the pouch itself is non-muscular.\u00a0\u00a0Internet research on the subject has been unproductive.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0I assume there must be some form of bony or cartilaginous\u00a0rod that\u00a0extends from the throat area\u00a0down the middle of the bottom of the pouch about half way to the tip of the bill.\u00a0 With muscular control of the base of that extension in the throat area they would be able to raise the\u00a0bottom of the pouch above\u00a0“horizontal”.\u00a0<\/p>\nI’ve seen them do it twice – the\u00a0 first time without a camera while the bird was perched.\u00a0 But the second time, a couple of weeks ago, it was done in flight <\/em>which I suspect might be quite unusual as it’s something I’ve never seen before and I have been unable to find any photos of the behavior (in flight) with an internet search.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\nNothing mind-boggling here but I thought it to be interesting enough for a brief post.<\/p>\n
Ron<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
American White Pelicans are known to do some pretty strange things with their pouch – one of them is pouch stretching (I’ve been unable to find an official\u00a0term for the behavior).\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0A four year old image – I no longer have the original file so can’t access exif data They pull their head back and force their\u00a0very flexible pouch down over their neck and upper chest in a process that looks, well.. bizarre.\u00a0 I don’t think this behavior is particularly unusual as I’ve seen and photographed it several times.\u00a0 According to Birds of North America Online the function of this display is “uncertain”.\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 Canon 7D, 1\/5000, f\/6.3, ISO 500 However, these birds are also fully capable of pulling the bottom of their pouch up above the level of the lower mandibles without\u00a0having to pull the pouch down over their neck.\u00a0\u00a0 I don’t fully understand how they’re able to do this since the pouch itself is non-muscular.\u00a0\u00a0Internet research on the subject has been unproductive.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0I assume there must be some form of bony or cartilaginous\u00a0rod that\u00a0extends from the throat area\u00a0down the middle of the bottom of the pouch about half way to the tip of the bill.\u00a0 With muscular control of the base of that extension in the throat area they would be able to raise the\u00a0bottom of the pouch above\u00a0“horizontal”.\u00a0 I’ve seen them do it twice – the\u00a0 first time without a camera while the bird was perched.\u00a0 But the second time, a couple of weeks ago, it was done in flight which…<\/p>\n
Continue reading<\/span><\/i><\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[5,334,395,424],"tags":[420,422,423,418,421,297,419],"class_list":["post-2275","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bird-oddities","category-birds","category-miscellaneous","category-pelicans","tag-american-white-pelican","tag-invert","tag-pelecanus-erythrorhyncos","tag-pelican","tag-pouch","tag-stretch","tag-white-pelican"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1zzJh-AH","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2275","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2275"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2275\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2275"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2275"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2275"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
![\"white-pelican-4367\"](\"http:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/06\/white-pelican-4367.jpg\" "\\"white-pelican-4367\\"")
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