Pelican

 

Pelicans are mentioned in Shakespeare’s play King Lear, with King Lear saying

 

KING LEAR
“Now, all the plagues that in the pendulous air
Hang fated o’er men’s faults light on thy daughters!
KENT
He hath no daughters, sir.
KING LEAR
Death, traitor! Nothing could have subdued nature
To such a lowness but his unkind daughters.
Is it the fashion that discarded fathers
Should have thus little mercy on their flesh?
Judicious punishment! ‘Twas this flesh begot
Those pelican daughters. (Shakespeare, 3.4.73-81)”

 

He compared his daughters to pelicans because they took advantage as pelican children due from their mother draining their mother and in this case father, his resources.

Pelicans are birds with a huge bill and are on the larger size of birds. As AllAboutBirds.org describes them, “A huge water bird with very broad wings, a long neck, and a massive bill that gives the head a unique, long shape. They have thick bodies, short legs, and short, square tails. During the breeding season, adults grow an unusual projection or horn on the upper mandible near the tip of the bill.” The one that many books, and movies such as, Finding Nemo show are the American White Pelicans.

A pelican “typically breed on islands in shallow wetlands in the interior of the continent. They spend winters mainly on coastal waters, bays, and estuaries, or a little distance inland.” (AllAboutBirds.org) A pelican’s behaviors and diet are also written about in AllAboutBirds.org, “American White Pelicans feed from the water’s surface, dipping their beaks into the water to catch fish and other aquatic organisms. They often upend, like a very large dabbling duck, in this process. They do not plunge-dive the way Brown Pelicans do. They are superb soarers (they are among the heaviest flying birds in the world) and often travel long distances in large flocks by soaring. When flapping, their wingbeats are slow and methodical.” They also eat minnows, crayfish, and honestly will adapt to the food resources that are available in wetlands. An American White pelican’s distribution is in North America most, but also in South America. They have migration patterns so most do not stay in one place. A pelican’s conservation status is great; “Populations of American White Pelicans have rebounded from lows in the mid-twentieth century and have grown at roughly 5 percent per year between 1966 and 2014, resulting in a tenfold increase, according to the North American Breeding Bird Survey.“

In total they are doing pretty well ever since the reduction of hunting for them.

A historical context of pelicans is that they were shot down be many rifles in 1907 and thus a protection was put forth for the pelicans. Throughout the years the population of pelicans grew and became a strong species. Pelicans in the cultural and literary context are shown as a sacrificial animal that the mother bleeds for her children as King Lear compared himself to. Pelicans also represent that they benefit from a group effort and that they use their bills to carry a lot with them.

Pelicans are not just important scientifically, but in literacy because of the symbol it creates in stories and poetry. Using pelicans in literacy can symbolize many factors of a story to show sacrifice or set a scene. It could mean migration, in general animals can symbolize many different meanings in stories especially birds like the pelican with many different features.

 

 

Works Cited

 

“American White Pelican”. Allaboutbirds.Org, 2017, https://www.allaboutbirds.org/guide/American_White_Pelican/id.

 

 

“Cite A Website – Cite This For Me”. Digitalcommons.Unl.Edu, 2017, http://digitalcommons.unl.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1036&context=icwdm