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SIERRA VISTA — A pelican was seen flying in Tombstone Thursday, 120 miles or more from its ocean home.
It’s an interesting sight to behold in the desert, though not uncommon, said Sherri Williamson, a director of the Southeastern Arizona Bird Observatory.
She’s known of people finding pelicans in the area before, including one that was found mummified on Fort Huachuca.
The bird seen Thursday was likely a young Brown Pelican, which live along the Pacific coast, Atlantic coast, Gulf of California and Mexico and are endangered along the Pacific coast. When young, their head and neck feathers are brown and become white as they mature.
 A wayward pelican floats over football practice Thursday at the old Tombstone High School. (Mark Levy-Herald/Review) |
Pelicans in the desert isn’t new, said Mary Powell-McConnell, a wildlife rehabilitator for the Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum. Native American drawings and stories have referenced the birds in past centuries.
Heavy winds before the monsoon can lead juvenile pelicans astray from their nests, or rookeries along the Gulf of California.
“They get caught up in these winds and get dumped in the desert. Like Dorothy in the ‘Wizard of Oz’,” Powell-McConnell said.
The young birds don’t have the strength or knowledge to find their way back home.
“The lucky ones find a lake filled with fish,” Powell-McConnell said.
Others are injured on cactus or concrete or become starved and dehydrated and are brought to wildlife rehabilitators if found.
In June 2004 Bisbee resident Frank Knight found a pelican on Highway 90 near the Sierra Vista Environmental Operations Park and took it to local wildlife rehabilitator Ilse Beebe.
Powell-McConnell has trained wildlife rehabilitators on how to care for pelicans before they can be brought to her.
“Basically I stabilize them, fatten them up and get them to Sea World,” she said.
Once in San Diego, rehabilitators at Sea World reintroduce the pelicans into groups and release them into the wild.
She sees an influx of the birds every five to seven years when the rookies are productive and food is available. The number of pelicans that end up in Arizona also depends on the directions of the winds.
Up to 26 pelicans have been in her care at the desert museum in a single year.
This year she hasn’t had any brought to her, but she saw one flying in Tucson this summer. Besides the pelican seen in Tombstone this week, she’s only heard of one other sighting in Phoenix. She expects more in two or three years when their food supplies are replenished in the Pacific Ocean.
REPORTER Laura Ory can be reached at 515-4683.
karen wrote on Aug 12, 2007 8:19 AM: