Park City's pelicans

Last week, as we were walking, I spotted some large, mostly white birds, by our neighborhood golf course and stopped to shot a video. I couldn't get too close, but could see that they had huge bills, like pelicans, which was quite unusual.

On Friday, we came across a smaller flock of the same birds, in flight, and they got closer to us, They confirmed what I saw previously, with their huge pelican yellow bill, with a bump on top, and a white plumage with a stripe of black.

As I returned home, I entered the description on Google and got the picture of an identical bird, the American white pelican (Pelecanus erythrorhynchos), a bird as large as the trumpeter swan. Its overall length can reach 70 inches (180 cm), including its huge beak that's around 11 to 15 inches long (280–390 mm) and a wingspan of about 95 to 120 inches (240–300 cm), making it the largest of any North American bird, after the California condor.

These giant birds nest in colonies in remote lakes of Canada's Alberta and its Northwest Territories. A small portion of their population uses Gunnison Island, in the Great Basin's Great Salt Lake as nesting ground while the southernmost colonies are found in southwestern Ontario and northeastern California.

They winter on the Pacific and Gulf of Mexico coasts from central California, Florida south to Panama, and along the Mississippi River at least as far north as St. Louis, Missouri. In winter quarters, they're rarely found on the open seashore, as they prefer estuaries and lakes. They cross deserts and mountains to avoid the open ocean while migrating.

Now you know everything about these rare visitors to Park City. No, American white pelicans don't ski!