White Pelican spotted at river Sighting surprises bird-watchers

A little drama unfolded a few weeks ago when people sighted an unusual bird here in Maine: an American white pelican.

I got an inkling of it when I came home to a message from Edmond Sirois in Veazie. He had seen what he believed to be a white pelican swimming in the Penobscot River, and had called me to report this odd sighting.

Unfortunately, by the time we spoke, the bird had disappeared, and I regretted not having the chance to investigate. I did not disbelieve Mr. Sirois – a pelican is pretty hard to confuse with any other bird – but I would have loved to see the bird.

I thought nothing more of the incident until I found another message from Mr. Sirois on my machine the next day. Triumphantly, he reported that the bird had been on the WABI-TV evening news. I called him back.

“I was right! I called it right!” he exclaimed.

“You sure did!” I replied.

Mr. Glendon Wilson of Etna had actually filmed the bird and loaned the footage to the station. Mr. Wilson, an employee of Webber Oil in Bangor, had gone down to the Penobscot River for his lunch break. He spotted the bird across the river, and ran for his binoculars and camera.

His assertion that he had seen a white pelican was initially met with disbelief, both from the station and from his employer.

“My boss joked that I was having lunch with Elvis,” he said.

But there is strength in numbers. At least three additional people saw the bird: Judy Markowsky, director of Maine Audubon’s Fields Pond Nature Center, and Marjorie Jordan and Inez Boyd, both of Veazie and members of the Bangor Nature Club.

Mrs. Jordan shared her observations of the bird, which she saw in Veazie at the end of Lemon Street.

“It was sitting on the pier, then it jumped into the water. It was so big and white, and went like a ball of cotton down into the water,” she said.

She also noted that the bird had white head plumes and a short, flat “horn,” or plate, on the lower half of its upper bill. These are characteristic of breeding birds.

Mrs. Jordan’s impression of the size of the bird was accurate; it is one of the largest pelicans. It weighs in at 20 pounds and has a wingspan of 91/2 feet, almost equaling the California condor in dimensions.

Contrary to what most people may think, the white pelican is not strictly a bird of southern latitudes, as is its cousin the brown pelican. In fact, it breeds primarily in western and central North America (Oregon, California, Nevada, Utah, Montana, Wyoming, Colorado, the Dakotas, and Minnesota), as well as in western Canada.

There have been very few reports of white pelicans in Maine. Markowsky said the bird (or birds, for it is possible that others were in the area) spotted on the Penobscot could have been a migrant heading toward the Gulf of Mexico; the presence of Hurricane Isidore may have temporarily changed its flight plan.

Chris Corio, a volunteer at Fields Pond Nature Center in Holden, can be reached at fieldspond@juno.com