{"id":23408,"date":"2014-04-23T06:20:35","date_gmt":"2014-04-23T12:20:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/?p=23408"},"modified":"2014-04-23T06:20:35","modified_gmt":"2014-04-23T12:20:35","slug":"pelicans-and-a-fish-too-big-to-swallow-part-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/2014\/04\/23\/pelicans-and-a-fish-too-big-to-swallow-part-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Pelicans And A Fish Too Big To Swallow – Part 2"},"content":{"rendered":"

This is a continuation of the events from yesterdays post <\/a>where an American White Pelican had repeatedly\u00a0tried\u00a0to swallow a very large, headless\u00a0carp but due to the size of the fish and\u00a0persistent pressure from other pelicans the effort (and the fish) had been abandoned.<\/p>\n

Two minutes later a different pelican decided to have a go at the fish (you can tell they’re different birds by the size of their “horns” protruding from their upper mandibles).<\/p>\n

All images are presented in the order they were taken.<\/p>\n

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\"american<\/a><\/p>\n

The second pelican scooped up the fish…<\/p>\n

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\"american<\/a><\/p>\n

and attempted to get the entire thing into its pouch…<\/p>\n

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\"american<\/a><\/p>\n

which wasn’t easy.<\/p>\n

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\"american<\/a><\/p>\n

While this was going on the bird could see other pelicans\u00a0starting\u00a0to move in…<\/p>\n

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\"american<\/a><\/p>\n

so this bird tried to beat a hasty (for a pelican) retreat.\u00a0 This was the first time I’ve ever noticed\u00a0one of these heavy-bodied\u00a0pelicans paddle so hard that its feet and legs came far out of the water.<\/p>\n

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\"american<\/a><\/p>\n

As it paddled it continued the attempt to swallow the fish.\u00a0 I’ve cropped this image as I have to show the tip of the bill of the other pelican moving in.<\/p>\n

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\"american<\/a><\/p>\n

The second pelican reached over the entire body of the first bird with its long bill and neck…<\/p>\n

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\"american<\/a><\/p>\n

but then backed off for a moment as the first bird made one more desperate attempt to get the fish down.\u00a0 There were times that I was simply amazed at how large the pouch is capable of stretching.\u00a0 I read one account (National Geographic) that said the pouch is capable of holding the equivalent of two flushes of toilet water.<\/p>\n

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\"american<\/a><\/p>\n

Now things began to get a little nasty.\u00a0\u00a0 Though at this point the fish couldn’t actually be seen the aggressor\u00a0repeatedly closed its bill over\u00a0the entire head and part of the pouch of the other bird.\u00a0\u00a0 I assume this was an attempt to get the first pelican to release the fish.<\/p>\n

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\"american<\/a><\/p>\n

In-between attempts the aggressor would momentarily back off but not by much and it was absolutely relentless in its pursuit.<\/p>\n

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\"american<\/a><\/p>\n

Here we get a relatively good look at the action.\u00a0 Pelicans have a mean-looking hook called the mandibular nail at the end of their bill that is used to hold on to slippery fish.\u00a0 At one point\u00a0 I saw (and photographed) this hook go into the eye of\u00a0 the bird with the fish but apparently no damage was done.<\/p>\n

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\"american<\/a><\/p>\n

The pelican with the carp would alternate between attempts at swallowing the fish and efforts to escape its tormentor…<\/p>\n

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\"american<\/a><\/p>\n

but sometimes it would do both.<\/p>\n

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\"american<\/a><\/p>\n

I’ve cropped this image a little tighter to show better detail of one of the interesting postures of the bird with the fish.\u00a0 The other pelican is just out of frame to the left.<\/p>\n

In the end there were no winners – certainly not the headless carp and neither pelican (in part 1 or part 2 of this post) was able to swallow the fish.\u00a0 Immediately after\u00a0 this photo was taken both\u00a0birds moved far off but I’m confident that the fish was simply released, as it had been once before.<\/p>\n

Ron<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This is a continuation of the events from yesterdays post where an American White Pelican had repeatedly tried to swallow a very large, headless carp but due to the size of the fish and persistent pressure from other pelicans the effort (and the fish) had been abandoned.<\/p>\n

Continue reading<\/span><\/i><\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":23419,"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":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[338,334,394,424],"tags":[420,74,141,657,1978,1979,423,421],"class_list":["post-23408","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-bear-river-migratory-bird-refuge-favorite-locations","category-birds","category-fighting-bird-behaviors","category-pelicans","tag-american-white-pelican","tag-carp","tag-fish","tag-hooked-bill","tag-horn","tag-mandibular-nail","tag-pelecanus-erythrorhyncos","tag-pouch"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/04\/american-white-pelican-5478-ron-dudley.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1zzJh-65y","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23408","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=23408"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23408\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/23419"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23408"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23408"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23408"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}