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Australian Pelican
Conservation status
Least Concern
Scientific classification
Kingdom: Animalia Phylum: Chordata Class: Aves Order: Pelecaniformes Family: Pelecanidae Genus: Pelecanus Species: P. conspicillatus
Binomial name
Pelecanus conspicillatus Temminck, 1824

The Australian Pelican (Pelecanus conspicillatus) is a large water bird, widespread on the inland and coastal waters of Australia and New Guinea, also in Fiji, parts of Indonesia and as a vagrant to New Zealand.

Australian Pelicans are medium-sized by pelican standards: 1.6 to 1.8 metres (5.3-6 feet) long with a wingspan of 2.3 to 2.5 metres (7.6-8.3 feet) and weighing 4 to 10 kilograms (8.8-22 pounds). They are predominantly white with black along the primaries of the wings. The pale, pinkish bill is enormous, even by pelican standards, and is the largest bill in the avian world. The record-sized bill was 49 cm (19.5 inches) long.

The species became first known to occur in New Zealand from a specimen shot at Jerusalem in 1890 and small numbers of subfossil bones, the first found at Lake Grassmere in 1947, followed by records of other stray individuals. The bones were later described as a new (sub)species, Pelecanus (conspicillatus) novaezealandiae (Scarlett, 1966: "New Zealand Pelican") as they appeared to be larger, but Worthy (1998), reviewing new material, determined that they were not separable from the Australian population.

The Australian pelicans are widespread on the inland and coastal waters of Australia and New Guinea, also in Fiji, parts of Indonesia and as a vagrant to New Zealand.

Australian Pelicans prefer large expanses of open water without too much aquatic vegetation. The surrounding environment is unimportant: it can be forest, grassland, desert, estuarine mudflats, an ornamental city park, or industrial wasteland, provided only that there is open water able to support a sufficient supply of fish.

Australian Pelicans follow no particular schedule of regular movement, simply following the availability of food supplies. When the normally barren Lake Eyre filled during 1974 to 1976, for example, only a handful of pelicans remained around the coastal cities: when the great inland lakes dried again, the population dispersed once more, flocks of thousands being seen on the northern coasts and some individuals reaching Christmas Island, Palau and New Zealand.

Breeding Australian pelicans will lay one or two eggs. After they hatch, the larger one will be fed more, and the smaller one will eventually die of starvation. For the first two weeks the chicks will be fed regurgitated liquid, but for the remaining two months they will be fed fish such as goldfish or the introduced European carp, and some invertebrates. Widespread throughout its large range, the Australian Pelican is evaluated as Least Concern on the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species.

• BirdLife International (2004). Pelecanus conspicillatus. 2006 IUCN Red List of Threatened Species. IUCN 2006. Retrieved on 12 May 2006. Database entry includes justification for why this species is of least concern.
• Scarlett, R. J. (1966): A Pelican in New Zealand. Notornis 13(4): 204-217. PDF fulltext
• Worthy, Trevor H. (1998): A remarkable fossil and archaeological fauna from Marfells Beach, Lake Grassmere, South Island, New Zealand. Records of the Canterbury Museum 12: 79-176.
• Australian Pelican - Australian Museum Online

At Melbourne Zoo	Artificial feeding at The Entrance, NSW	Beach roosting at Moreton Island	Lake Albert, New South Wales
At Tangalooma, during artificial feeding session	At Noosaville, Queensland	Strange behaviour

Wikimedia Commons has media related to:

Australian Pelican

• Pelican videos on the Internet Bird Collection
• BirdLife Species Factsheet
• IUCN Red List
• Australian Museum fact sheet
• Gould's The Birds of Australia plate
• Australian Pelicans at Victor Harbor, South Australia