Brown pelican

Pelecanus occidentalis · The brown pelican is a coastal bird that lives along the Atlantic and Pacific coasts of the Americas, from New Jersey to the Amazon River mouth and from British Columbia to Peru.

Brown pelican
Photo: Charles J. Sharp, CC BY-SA 4.0
Brown pelican
Photo: Diego Delso, CC BY-SA 4.0
Brown pelican
Photo: © Frank Schulenburg, CC BY-SA 4.0

Taxonomy

KingdomAnimalia
PhylumChordata
ClassAves
OrderPelecaniformes
FamilyPelecanidae
GenusPelecanus
SpeciesPelecanus occidentalis

Where it lives

Coasts from the US to northern Chile and Brazil, including the Caribbean and Galápagos.

Fun facts

  • The brown pelican is the smallest of the eight pelican species, yet it is still often one of the larger seabirds where it lives.
  • Air sacs under its skin and inside its bones make the brown pelican exceptionally buoyant, and it is graceful in the air but clumsy on land.
  • Flying 18 to 21 m above the ocean, it spots schools of fish, then dives bill-first like a kingfisher, sometimes vanishing completely beneath the surface.
  • Brown pelicans can drink salty seawater because their salt glands are very good at getting rid of salt.

Play it

The Brown pelican was the creature in a regional daily on October 19, 2026. Can you identify tomorrow's from its photos? Every day brings a new creature to place from kingdom to genus, map and name.

Play today's creature or replay a past daily

Facts and taxonomy adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0).