By Fred Bunnel
The island is about the size of a football field. The last time I was there (decades ago), there were nine living trees on it (white spruce and lodgepole pine) and six dead ones. They also were spruce and pine. Much of the shorter vegetation had been killed by guano and the trampling of large webbed feet. Of the herbs, stinging nettle was most common. It likes nitrogen and there is plenty in the guano. In the summer it stinks and your breathing is throttled by vapours of dead fish.
The single American White Pelican colony in BC is on a wee island in Stum Lake, which is about 25 km NE of Alexis Creek. When I studied them I backpacked in. The area is now White Pelican Provincial Park and has a road in.
Pelicans are a suffering bird. You may recognize the title as a verse from one translation of Psalm 102:6.
“I am like a pelican of the wilderness:
I am like an owl of the desert.”
There was a pronounced decline in American White Pelican numbers in the mid-20th century, largely attributable to spraying of DDT, endrin and other organochlorides, coupled with widespread draining and pollution of wetlands. At least 20 colonies in Canada were abandoned, about half of the original 46 colonies. There has been some recovery since Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring and stricter environmental protection laws. When we closed out our assessment of the single colony in BC in 1980, it had been declining at a rate of 3 nests per year. The species was declared endangered.
The air hums with the living electricity of carrion flies. It is the most precious island in British Columbia. Every April about 150 to 200 American White Pelicans arrive. That was in the 1970s and 1980’s. Things will have changed since then.
A weary traveler, a suffering bird. By the time they reach BC in April, the pelicans have travelled from the southern coasts of California and western Mexico. They are big birds to be making that flight. The heaviest are equal in weight to the trumpeter swan, commonly considered North America’s heaviest bird (up to 13.6 kg or 30 lbs). The trumpeter’s average weight is higher. California Condors are lighter but have a much larger wingspan.
The pelicans arrive hungry and the female may get hungrier. Once courtship begins she may not feed for a week. Soon after arrival at Stum Lake, they set up tiny nesting territories two bill lengths apart. Parents take turns going fishing and incubating the 1, usually 2 and sometimes 3 eggs. Fishing trips are neither short nor leisurely. Pelicans are 15 to 20 times the weight of a mallard. Their take-off is labored. Flight to their fishing lakes may take them 190 km – a long way to go for lunch.
Unlike the brown pelican or white pelicans in Africa, the pelican in BC does not dive. The lakes they fish in must be shallow enough that their fish-trap bills can scoop up prey. You often can find them on Chilcotin Lake which is little more than a meter deep.
One pelican is an inefficient fisherman, so they move as disorderly arcs, herding and corralling fish before capturing them in their fish-net bill. In BC, they take mostly lake chub so do not compete with anglers. The fishing technique means that pelicans never leave their colony singly, but in groups of at least 5, each ponderous bird joining the feathery, corkscrew spiraling updrafts until only white specks can be seen.
If all goes well, about 180 eggs will hatch at Stum Lake. Young feed on the fish regurgitated into their parents’ massive pouches, but they are sloppy feeders and semi-digested fish litters the island. All 180 don’t survive and young pelican corpses, as well as fish, attract the flies. In good years about 70 young pelicans are fledged.
Some years are bad.
Clutch size is largely constant from year to year, but mortality varies. In 1972 curious occupants of a private plane wanted a look and stampeded the adult pelicans, who crushed eggs and young in their terror. Only 10 young were fledged from the 256 eggs laid.
The single island still used by pelicans.
Coyote scat droppings on one of the islands decimated; a pocket watch for scale.
Pelicans used to nest on three islands. In 1974, low water allowed coyotes to reach two of the three islands and only 24 young were fledged. The pelicans did not return to the two islands decimated. Herring gulls nest there now. Only one island is now used. Pelicans use shallow water. Climate change is drying up shallow water bodies throughout the southern half of BC.
I’m not brave or even foolish enough to guess which of British Columbia’s animals is most endangered. I may be after I’ve written about a few more species. The white pelican is a serious contender. White Pelican Provincial Park is now closed to the public from March 31 to August 31; you now know why. Spook the birds and they will trample their eggs and young. For that same reason, notices are posted at nearby airports indicating that Stum Lake is a no-fly zone; nor should you fly over feeding lakes. At least 20 colonies have been abandoned – you could kill a miracle. Far better to visit feeding lakes like Chilcotin, Alkali or Nazko Lake Park and watch them feed and fly. You may see a miracle.
I’m still almost surprised, but grateful when an aircraft takes off and I have some sense of the horsepower it takes to do that. I know the physics, but flying remains a miracle to me. At their fishing lakes you can watch their huge bodies become airborne, gain altitude, then float mysteriously: some feathered, modern pterodactyl fueled only by fish.
Now it’s Psalm 102:7: I watch, and am as a sparrow alone upon the house top.
You can see the miracle without harming it at its foraging areas or during its leisurely fall migration down through the Okanagan Valley. In the fall you just might see birds bigger than a Thanksgiving turkey flying to a wintering ground we aren’t sure about. If we protect their nests during breeding and our shallow lakes don’t all dry up, they may come back to that same lonely island next spring.
Current Conservation Data Centre status – critically imperiled.
