Tuesday May 31, 2022
Monterey Herald —
Bart Selby, a member of the NOAA Monterey Bay National Marine Sanctuary Conservation Working Group, picked up a distressed California brown pelican on Monday at Pillar Point Harbor in Half Moon Bay, one of the first individuals retrieved so far north. “It didn’t have the energy to hold its wings properly folded,” Selby said. The second-year pelican survived transport to International Bird Rescue in Fairfield (IBR), but died the next day.
In mid-May, Selby, now writing a book about brown pelicans, accompanied Dr. Dan Anderson, emeritus professor from UC Davis, who has been studying pelicans for 50 years, on a trip to the Sea of Cortez to assist Mexican government biologists monitoring and banding at breeding sites. Many of our summer visiting pelicans are hatched in Mexico.
On their way back, the pelican coconut telegraph was abuzz with word of a mass stranding event in Southern California, including a report of one bird strolling through a convenience store. The cause of the 2022 event has not yet been verified. Similar events affecting the brown pelican occurred in California in 2010 and 2012. “International Bird Rescue suspects that part of the problem is a lack of available fish stocks leading to birds failing to find enough to eat or taking extra risks when foraging for food,” an IBR statement reported.