Pelican

Has anyone ever seen a baby pelican in the wild?
I see plenty of stock standard Pelicanos in my travels but no chiluns
hmm

I have!

And you made me remember it, NNE of Port Hedland WA is an Island called Turtle Island, I visited a few times in the early 80's as a fisherman, and on the North West beach was a colony of pelicans when we landed on the beach all the young-uns waddled down the beach and swam out 50 or so meters.

Like most islands with bird colonies it stank like $hit.

Was cool seeing them though, and I haven't seen them anywhere else since, despite there being plenty of Pelicans around where I now live.

The same thing with basically every seabird.

But Frigates are very good at spotting them, there isn't a baby seabird out there that they haven't eaten, also know as the bastard birds of the sea.

All I know about pelicans is when I was a boy my mum and I were walking down the pier in Santa Cruz when suddenly there was a loud electrical arcing noise and a flash, we looked up and a giant pelican fell down to the pier. People gathered around, it was clearly dead as its feet were blackened and smoke came from it's mouth. It had apparently decided to land on the electrical wires with one leg on each wire, most birds are apparently too small to do this.
This later gave us the idea to throw stretched out coat hangers onto the electric wires while waiting for the school bus in the morning, if it drapes across two wires it explodes in a flash and a rain of sparks. People in the neighborhood reported the power dipped momentarily.

Since the land grab around Erskine and Mandurah a lot of pelicans are now roosting on penguin island. The whole northwest tip of the island is now basically one big pelican colony.
Go have a walk around and up to the viewing platform. You'll see heaps of them at the right time of year.