Pink-Backed Pelican

• It is one of only two pelicans that live in Africa, along with the great white pelican.
• It has been wiped out in Madagascar, where it used to breed.
• In southern Africa its breeding colonies are protected inside parks, but its feeding and dispersal areas are not, which worries researchers.

Skeleton type

Vertebrate - internal bony skeleton (bird)

Habitat & environment

Swamps and shallow lakes of Africa and southern Arabia. It nests in trees. Its southernmost breeding colony in East Africa is in the Greater St Lucia Wetland Park, in KwaZulu-Natal (South Africa), where there is only a single breeding site

Size at birth

The chick is brick red at hatching, then becomes covered in white down, starts to feather at around twelve days and flies between 70 and 75

Gestation / incubation

30 - 36 days

Litter / clutch size

1-3 oval, white, rough-textured eggs, exceptionally up to 6. Incubation lasts 30-36 days. Hatching success in undisturbed pairs can reach 95%, but through sibling competition or cainism only one chick usually survives the first weeks in the wild; in this species the chicks survive longer than in the rest of the genus. Both parents feed them by regurgitation and, after a week, the chicks already put their heads into the adults' gular pouch to feed themselves

Sources consulted: IUCN Red List; BirdLife DataZone; Bowker y Downs 2006 (tesis M.Sc., Universidad de KwaZulu-Natal); Wikipedia (Pink-backed pelican); Gmelin 1789

Best time: All year round: it is a resident breeder in Africa