State Bird of Louisiana

BIRDS OF AMERICA: THE BROWN PELICAN

State Bird 

of Louisiana

By John James Audubon,
F. R. SS. L. & E.

THE BROWN 

PELICAN
[Brown Pelican.]

PELECANUS FUSCUS, Linn.
[Pelecanus occidentalis.] 

The Brown Pelican, which is one of the most interesting of our American birds, is a constant resident in the Floridas, where it resorts to the Keys and the salt-water inlets, but never enters fresh-water streams, as the White Pelican is wont to do. It is rarely seen farther eastward than Cape Hatteras, but is found to the south far beyond the limits of the United States. Within the recollection of persons still living, its numbers have been considerably reduced, so much indeed that in the inner Bay of Charleston, where twenty or thirty years ago it was quite abundant, very few individuals are now seen, and these chiefly during a continuance of tempestuous weather. There is a naked bar, a few miles distant from the main land, between Charleston and the mouth of the Santee, on which my friend JOHN BACHMAN some years ago saw a great number of these birds, of which he procured several; but at the present day, few are known to breed farther east than the salt-water inlets running parallel to the coast of Florida, forty or fifty miles south of St. Augustine, where I for the first time met with this Pelican in considerable numbers.

Continua em: http://www.50states.com/bird/bpelican.htm#.UrUKxVtDu8Y