Spot-billed Pelican

Fascinating facts about the Spot-billed Pelican

• In the early 1900s massive colonies dotted the landscape: a 1906 visit to Kundakulam recorded about 10 pelican nests alongside nearly 200 painted-stork nests, while the Sittang River colony stretched over an area twenty miles long and five miles wide, hosting thousands of birds. By the 1970s the once-thriving Kolleru Lake colony of nearly 3 000 pelicans vanished, a stark reminder that habitat loss can erase entire breeding hubs that once covered whole river valleys.
• Spot-billed pelicans occupy a swath of Southeast Asia covering between 129 000 and 181 000 km², yet only 7 500-10 000 individuals remain, prompting the IUCN to list them as vulnerable until a 2007 reassessment lifted them to near-threatened. Their range spans India, Sri Lanka, Cambodia and Sumatra, but breeding is now confined to a few key sites, illustrating how a once-wide distribution can shrink to isolated pockets when wetlands disappear.
• Each breeding pair lays three eggs, spaced 36-48 hours apart, which are incubated for about 30 days. Chicks fledge after 60-90 days and can hunt on their own by roughly 12 weeks, yet they only reach sexual maturity after 30 months, essentially their third year, when the distinctive adult plumage finally appears.
• From 2 500 breeding pairs in 2001, in Cambodia's Tonle Sap region surged to 10 000 pairs by 2007, a rise driven by 24-hour ranger protection and the enlistment of former hunters to guard nests. This dramatic rebound helped trigger a proposal to down-list the species, showing how community-led stewardship can swiftly reverse declines in a once-imperiled waterbird.
• Spot-billed pelicans stretch up to a meter-and-a-half long, and can span almost eight feet when their wings are outstretched, a size that lets a single bird hold roughly a kilogram of fish each day.

Sources

Every fact above was checked against these pages, and kept only where one of them states it.

• Wikipedia
• Mongabay

At a glance

About the Spot-billed Pelican

As the sun rises over the tranquil wetlands, the Spot-billed Pelican emerges, its majestic form undulating across the water with a serene, almost ethereal, quality, its massive wings beating in a slow, powerful rhythm. With each deliberate stroke, the pelican glides effortlessly, its snowy plumage glistening like alabaster in the morning light, as it searches for the day's sustenance in the murky depths below. In this peaceful domain, the Spot-billed Pelican reigns supreme, its very presence a testament to the enduring beauty and majesty of the natural world.

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