I did a little panning practicing with the Brown Pelicans floating by looking for some food all day long. They always amaze me how close they can fly to the water, spot some food, dive in and catch it. With doing some investigating I learned this about white and brown pelicans.
White and brown pelicans use two different ways to feed: Group fishing, used by white pelicans all over the world. They will form a line to chase schools of small fish into shallow water, and then simply scoop them up. Large fish are caught with the bill-tip, then tossed up in the air to be caught and slid into the gullet head first.
Plunge-diving, used almost exclusively by the American Brown Pelican, but only rarely by white pelicans.
Pelicans can grow to a wingspan of three meters and weigh 13 kilograms, males being a little larger than females and having a longer bill.
From fossil records, it is known that pelicans have been around for over 40 million years.
