Productivity of Brown Pelican in the northern Gulf of Mexico (2014-2015)

The Brown Pelican (Pelecanus occidentalis) is a large-bodied seabird that nests in colonies of 10 to upwards of 5,000 pairs, on nearshore barrier islands in subtropical and tropical North American waters. It breeds between March and August, laying 2–3 eggs and raising 1–2 chicks per year. The species is facultatively migratory during nonbreeding, with some individuals remaining resident and others leaving breeding areas. Pelicans forage in near- and offshore waters and capture schooling fish by plunge-diving. This dataset serves as a record of field notes used to estimate Brown pelican fledging success in 8 breeding colonies in Texas (2014), and Alabama and the Florida Panhandle (2015). We visited nesting colonies from late incubation to fledging and recorded nest content in 3-4 focal groups per colony, each group containing 20 – 30 nests. Once nestlings reached 3 – 4 weeks of age, we banded nestlings on the right tarsus with a metal and on the left tarsus with a permanent plastic band engraved with a unique three-digit white alphanumeric code. Once nestlings began to disperse away from nest locations (typically ca. 30 days post-hatch), we searched the surrounding areas of the colony with binoculars for banded chicks and recorded all bands observed. Beginning approximately 8 weeks after hatch, we also searched the colony every 3 – 5 days for banded chicks that had died, and recovered all bands found. Detailled methods may be found in the associated publication.

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  "010:12"
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  "geospatial"
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