Australian Pelican - Feeding

Feeding

Australian Pelicans feed by plunge-diving while swimming on the surface of the water. They work in groups to drive fish to shallower water, where they stick their sensitive bills in to snatch their prey. Some feeding grounds in large bodies of water have included up to 1,900 individual birds. They will sometimes also forage solitarily. Their predominant prey is fish and they commonly feed on introduced species such as goldfish, European carp and European perch. When possible, they also predate native fish, with a seeming preference for the perch Leiopotherapon unicolour. However, the Australian Pelican seems to be less of a piscivore and more catholic in taste than other pelicans. It regularly feeds on insects and many aquatic crustaceans, especially the Common yabby and the shrimps in the Macrobrachium genus. This pelican also takes other birds with some frequency, such as Silver gulls and Grey teal, including eggs, nestlings, fledgings and adults, which they kill by pinning them underwater and drowning them. Reptiles and amphibians are also taken when available. Reportedly even small dogs have been swallowed. The Australian Pelican is an occasional kleptoparasitic of other water birds, such as cormorants.