Great white birds

by Douglas Hunter

When four American white pelicans touched down in Owen Sound harbour last May, their unexpected arrival made headlines. The sighting was one of several in the spring of 2008 in the central Great Lakes. Pelicans were also spotted on Michigan’s Saginaw Bay, at Cheboygan on the Straits of Mackinac and along Michigan’s Upper Peninsula.

Such sightings have recently become more frequent, although finding pelicans in this part of the province is still highly unusual. “There have been various sightings over the past half-dozen years,” says Peter Middleton, vice-president of the Owen Sound Field Naturalists. “They’ve been seen before in Owen Sound, but also at Oliphant, Sauble Beach, at places along the west coast of the Bruce Peninsula.” They’ve occasionally been spotted as well at Point Pelee and in 2007 on Cook’s Bay in Lake Simcoe. The question is whether these birds are migratory strays or are yet more evidence that the summer breeding range is moving eastward.

One of the largest birds in North America, weighing as much as 10 kilograms and with a wingspan of up to three metres, the white pelican is an impressive bird. Although often thought of as a “tropical” species, it can rightly be regarded as a northern bird. Its summer breeding grounds are predominantly in the Canadian and U.S. midwest, but breeding has also been noted at Lake of the Woods, Rainy Lake and Lake Nipigon in northwestern Ontario. Emerging evidence indicates that breeding may be taking place in the James Bay and Hudson Bay area, which would explain the increased spring sightings through the central Great Lakes region.

“For the past 10 years, they’ve been seen repeatedly and annually across eastern and northern Ontario,” explains Ken Abraham, a waterfowl and wetlands scientist with Ontario’s Ministry of Natural Resources, who compiled

the data in the Ontario Breeding Bird Atlas that indicates “probable” breeding on Akimiski Strait in western James Bay. Like cormorants, he explains, pelicans will colonize an area for several years, assessing the food supply before breeding there.

“Over the past decade,” Abraham elaborates, “we have had a few reports of white pelicans from residents of the Cree villages on the James and Hudson Bay coast – for example, at Peawanuck and Moosonee–Moose Factory – and we have made our own observations, such as at Burntpoint Creek in Polar Bear Provincial Park in 2001 and in Akimiski Strait. This is an increase over historical reports, indicating some greater degree of wandering or exploration of northern areas by white pelicans.” In August 2005, a joint duck survey by the Ministry of Natural Resources and the Canadian Wildlife Service spotted a flock of 200 white pelicans between the Albany and Attawapiskat rivers.

Abraham was hoping to visit the suspected colony site on Akimiski Strait in July 2008, to see whether a breeding population of pelicans had taken hold. If so, these striking birds may become a more common migratory sighting in the Great Lakes.