Pelican breeding in the UK

kiang

kiang

Well-Known Member
15+ year member
Compared to other countries Germany and the Czech republic spring to mind, pelican breeding in the UK has been rather woeful, what is the reason for this i wonder?
The only collections i can think of that have successfully bred pelicans are Longleat and Bristol with pink backs and Blackpool last year with a single eastern white. Perhaps there have been more i don't know.

Why are they not breeding here in the UK?, are they just a very difficult species to encourage to breed, is there a lack of winter housing?, could it be dietary or flock sizes?

Interested to hear any comments and maybe news of further breedings of these magnificent birds.
 
Does anybody know whether the pink-backed pelicans at Longleat are being reared annually , they do seem to have a big flock when shown being fed on 'Animal Park' . The small flock at Bristol seem to have given up breeding .

I think many of the breeding successes on the Continent are achieved when the birds are housed indoors for the winter , this method of management does not generally seem to be followed in the UK .
 
I think that one of the main problems in the lack of breeding was down to the numbers of birds held by collections and possibly the sex ratio as well. If you look at some foreign collections they seem to have larger groups of birds. Certainly the Berlin Tierpark does and Walsrode etc.
Sometimes it also down to understanding the birds and keeping them in the right environment.
 
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Is blackbrook brededing?
 
We're down to five pelicans at Bristol now, all of which are fairly old. One of our " males" died recently and on post mortem was actually female which doesn't help. We do still have two pairs though if the other sexing is right! I was told the other day that 4.4 birds seems to be a good number for breeding so we're a bit short and although the birds do a lot of displaying and some nestbuilding each year, we haven't had eggs for a while. Our other problem is we now have a no pinioning policy at Bristol which means we couldn't keep any we did breed and may have problems moving them on. I don't believe Longleats are breeding now either so numbers are pretty low of this species in the UK. If I recall correctly the two we hand reared a few years back went to Twycross. I'm not sure if they are still there, but hand rearing probably wouldn't be an option again as they were very imprinted and loved venturing to the top of the slide in the play area and snapping playfully at the children below!
 
What about London - Regent's Park? I remember some chicks (Eastern white) beeing sent there from Prague in late 1990es. Have they ever bred?
 
No breeding at Regent's Park . As well as most UK flocks being small there is also a very uneven sex ratio in many which cannot help . The successful flock at Blackpool is only small , hope they are successful again this year .
 
How about to import new birds from continent to increase the flock size and balance the sex-ratio of those groups? How difficult it would be - I mean: under which circumstances is it allowed to import zoo-bred water birds into UK?
 
Jana said:
How about to import new birds from continent to increase the flock size and balance the sex-ratio of those groups? How difficult it would be - I mean: under which circumstances is it allowed to import zoo-bred water birds into UK?
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It can be difficult importing certain birds into the UK. I remember some years ago Christopher Marler who used to own Flamingo Gardens and Zoological Park near Olney tried to get some Australian White Pelicans for his collection but had great problems. He held most of the pelican species bar them, although he never bred them.
 
If I remember only captive bred Australian pelicans are on offer for export. Maybe one of the Australian members could comment on this.
 
bongorob said:
If I remember only captive bred Australian pelicans are on offer for export. Maybe one of the Australian members could comment on this.
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Adelaide bred the first in the world about 10 years ago, don't know if any other Aussie zoos have bred them:confused:
 
taronga produced a chick in 07 (or early 08 dont remember!) but thats the only one ikonow of there
 
Two wild pelicans settled in the pelican enclosure in Perth Zoo in either 2001 or 03 and produced several chicks. I don't know if they have been back, or if the nesting behaviour stimulated the pinioned birds to breed.
 
This thread inspired me to check out the Dalmatian Pelicans at Paignton today. There were none on the lake but I gather they were all rescued from the ice a week or so ago and are still off show.
 
Pygathrix said:
Two wild pelicans settled in the pelican enclosure in Perth Zoo in either 2001 or 03 and produced several chicks. I don't know if they have been back, or if the nesting behaviour stimulated the pinioned birds to breed.
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Wen I was at Perth Zoo I remember seeing Pelicans on the lake/pond near the entrance. Is that where the wild ones bred do you know?- its not very big and very 'public'.

Generally Pelicans live in large flocks though I think the Australian species may be an exception? But it may explain why so few places have repeated sucess with breeding them if the birds lack the numbers to build up breeding stimulus. Pinioning may be another impediment as it restricts certain other activities too (like flying;) ) I'm glad to hear that Bristol have a non-pinioning policy generally nowadays:)- I hope other zoos will follow that example.
 
Walsrode has bred many pelican species.

In Europe, a few zoos have bred the Australian pelican I think. Berlin?
 
Fodders said:
Walsrode has bred many pelican species.

In Europe, a few zoos have bred the Australian pelican I think. Berlin?
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Yes the Tierpark, bred the Australian pelican i think in the same year as Adelaide's first
 
When I previously worked with pelicans I talked with other staff about the poor success of pelican breeding in the UK. As has already been mentioned flock size was the main difference with the consistantly successful groups in mainland Europe. Sex ratio may also be a problem, but pelicans are notoriously difficult to sex - bill length can be one way.

Captive pelicans in Australian zoos equally breed rarely, but this is probably due to the species being common, and as has been mentioned, often free-loads as wild birds. Consequently I would think that it was very unlikely that European zoos are likely to acquire Australian-bred birds in the near future.
 
Pertinax said:
Wen I was at Perth Zoo I remember seeing Pelicans on the lake/pond near the entrance. Is that where the wild ones bred do you know?- its not very big and very 'public'.

Generally Pelicans live in large flocks though I think the Australian species may be an exception? But it may explain why so few places have repeated sucess with breeding them if the birds lack the numbers to build up breeding stimulus. Pinioning may be another impediment as it restricts certain other activities too (like flying;) ) I'm glad to hear that Bristol have a non-pinioning policy generally nowadays:)- I hope other zoos will follow that example.
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The pond in Perth is the one near the entrance with the gibbon islands, the pelicans are on a small peninsula. The wild pelicans nested among the zoo's birds and you could get quite a good view of the chicks.

While I agree that less pinioning is a good thing, it must make the keeping of waterfowl etc much more difficult, with covered aviaries being required for starters. But this is likely to have been a key to the success of the recent breeding of shoebills.
 
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