Ologies with Alie Ward - Smologies #41: PELICANS with Juita Martinez

Episode Date: March 30, 2024

Spine mysteries, face purses, limericks, flim flam, flags, divebombs, sibling rivalries, and more! The warm and wonderful pelicanologist Juita Martinez studies these glorious dinosaurs and shares what it’s like to hold a floofy baby sea bird, how these birds’ ecosystems are being restored, and what she loves about being in nature. Also: How much fish can they fit in there, anyway?A donation went to BackyardBasecamp.orgFull-length (*not* G-rated) Pelicanology episode + tons of science linksMore kid-friendly Smologies episodes!Become a patron of Ologies for as little as a buck a monthOlogiesMerch.com has hats, shirts, masks, totes!Follow @Ologies on Twitter and InstagramFollow @AlieWard on Twitter and InstagramSound editing by, and Jarrett Sleeper of MindJam Media, Steven Ray Morris, and Mercedes Maitland of Maitland AudioMade possible by work from Noel Dilworth, Susan Hale, Kelly R. Dwyer, Emily White, & Erin TalbertSmologies theme song by Harold Malcolm

Oh hey, it's that lady in the park just staring at pigeons trying to imagine what's on their minds. Allie Ward back with more ologies to gulp into your mouth pouch. Oh, open wide for this Smology's episode about pelicans. Here's the deal, if you're like, what's Smology's? Smologies are shorter edited versions. They're G rated, so they're classroom safe. This one is all about birds with big mouths.

Now if you want the full episode, you can click the link in the show notes. Those are a little racier, more in-depth, but this is a great digest if you're carpooling to school or you need something to send your grandma if she does not swear. Maybe she does. But anyway, clean version, shorter, enjoy. Okay, Pelicanology. Others have used this word before, so we're using it now. So Pelican seems to come from Pelicus, which is the Greek for axe, because of the bird's long axe-handily bill. So I started following thisologist recently, and her pinned tweet is a video of what appears to be tiny plucked chickens that are dancing. But they're actually squawking Pelican infants,

and I love them. So I messaged her three words in all caps, let's talk pelicans, as one does in a professional correspondence. And her response was, I can talk about dinosaur floofs all day. So we hopped on the horn to chat about bird nerds and big bills and saggy sacks, wingsp spans, spine illusions, dive bombs, and more. So open your ears and mouth pouch be a Pelicanology episode? I mean, on the inside, like very deep. Maybe you would know that. You're going to know this better than I would.

Are you a Pelicanologist? Have you ever used that word? I actually have never used that word, but starting from today, I'm actually going to change my Twitter bio. I checked and she changed her Twitter bio to read, PhD student, hashtag dinosaur floofs equals brown pelicans plus pelicanology. And now what about brown pelicans? First off, what is a pelican?

Is a pelican only the kind that have the purse attached to their face? I've never actually heard someone say that. That is awesome. I love that description of it. They do! They have a handbag for a mouth. They do! That is a good one.

I love it. Yes, so all pelicans have a purse, which is better known as a goulart pouch. And that's what helps them survive. That is how they catch their food. Goulart means throat in Latin. So a goulart pouch is a pelican face purse. That's what it is. Brown pelicans specifically actually plunge dive. So from about 30 feet or so up in the air they will spot a school of fish and then just dive down and use that pouch to basically scoop up all the fish. It's in my purse. And what do they do with all the water that they also scoop up? So if there's other birds around such as gulls that try to like steal the fish from their mouth, they will just slightly open their bell and let the water like seep out until there's just

fish in their pouch. Why do they need so many fish? This is what I can't understand because they're kind of big birds, right? But other big birds, they catch a fish, they catch a thing at a time. But pelicans are like, in it. I feel like they have the best equipment in the game. Like, why do they need to catch so much fish? I would think it depends on the season. So if they're trying to feed their chicks, they have about a maximum of three chicks. So if you think about a Pelican, they're about 16 pounds, which is quite a bit of weight. Yeah. And on top of that, they have to feed themselves,

have enough energy to fly around and catch the fish. But then they also have one to three mouths to feed. They're gonna need quite a bit of fish for that. And these Pelicans are born completely naked and with their eyes shut. So they're completely reliant on their parents for quite a few months. And then what about their wingspan? Because a 16 pound bird's pretty big.

How big are the wings to keep it aloft? It's about six feet, which is taller than me. Oh, that's huge. That's like a condor size, right? Yeah. It's a good social distancing size. Oh my God, that needs to be your new campaign is everyone's to one pelican wingspan away from each other.

Yes. Oh my gosh. So 16 pounds, six feet. because are they all inland or I mean, are they all Gulf or or coastal or are they inland too? So we have two species in North America. We have the brown pelican and the white pelican. And actually, the brown pelican is smaller than the white pelican by about 10 pounds or so. And the brown pelican stays on the coastline, like up and down the West Coast and then throughout the Gulf of Mexico

and up to North Carolina ish. And the white pelicans on the other hand, you can't see them on the coast, but they breed inland. How many pelican species are there in the world? I looked it up. There are eight, in case that ever comes up in a game of Pelican trivia. And now you call them floof dinosaurs? Dinosaur floofs? Dinosaur floofs. Aren't they really fuzzy? Okay, so there's like this middle stage. They're born naked and then they start getting these little pin feathers and they get their down feathers first and that down feather is what sparked the hashtag. So down feather is the insulating part of their body and it's really soft and floofy and so when you're holding a kind of baby pelican

that just has down feathers they're pretty floofy and I feel very lucky. So you've gotten to hold them? Yes, so we have a project because Louisiana is losing land at a very rapid rate because it's sinking and the sea level is rising. So these islands that are perfect habitats for these pelicans to raise their young are actually getting overtopped and just completely disappearing. We don't really understand what happens to pelicans once their islands

disappear because their instinct is to come back to the same islands that they were born on. And so what I've been doing is I am putting leg bands on these pelicans so that future grad students once I'm graduated, it are able to go back and track these bands. And hopefully we'll get a better understanding of where they move to. So apparently only 30% of pelicans survive their first year of life. Only 2% make it to age 10. But some, some have been known to live until their 40s. So somewhere out there, there's a Gen X pelican listening to Britpop.

But how do they tell who's who? So my lab does orange bands and other labs that study pelicans, use different color bands. And these color bands are really large, so we can see them from really far away without having to disturb the birds. Oh, that's nice. When I was looking at baby pelicans on your Twitter,

I myself had an impulse to want to give them one tiny kiss on their heads. Is that a normal impulse for a person? I would say yes. But if you ever come down to Louisiana and come out to the islands with me, I think you will be satisfied just by holding them because I will say they might be floofy,

but they're also very stinky. So a hug is as far as I usually want to go with it. That's good to know. I know that it is not a good idea to put my mouth on wildlife for the wildlife's sake. Do not put your mouth on wildlife. The wildlife does not want you to. Also, I looked at the floofs and they look like what would come out of the dryer, like in the lint hatch after washing a load of brand new floofy towels.

So picture a lint ball, but with big clappy flappy face parts. But when they're born, they are indeed featherless. They look like little alive frozen chickens. They look so cute. So cute, I can't handle it. And the gular pouch or the purse is so tiny on the baby chicks and they're just, oh my gosh, it gets me every time. When you're talking about doing restoration work to make sure that they have a home that they can come back to or that they have habitat that they can inhabit,

how do you do that if you're up against things like sea levels rising and like land sinking? What do you do? So right now Louisiana is being restored, but not by me. They actually have agencies such as the Coastal Protection and Restoration Act and different groups of people that come out here and basically perform something called dredging. So they put in these pipes basically under the ocean level.

And what they do is they pump a bunch of sediment from the ocean floor onto these islands. Whoa. So we're basically just building land from the ocean floor. We're just putting it up. And these pipes go for miles. When you are tracking them, I mean, can you see on a year to year basis any any change or improvement? Yes. So some islands have been restored and some have not. And what my research aims to do is to compare the Pelican

populations on the two different sets of islands across coastal Louisiana. And our preliminary data is telling us that there's a larger population on Restored Island, which means the restoration is working and the billions of dollars is not being wasted. And we also found that chicks are more likely to reach that age where they can fly away and fend for themselves on restored islands versus those that are born on unrestored islands, which is really helpful because no one's actually looked at that yet. How are their numbers? Like when, when did they start to maybe take a dip? So by 1963, brown pelicans were completely extinct from the state of Louisiana.

Seriously? Yes, due to DDT. So if they're, if they keep laying eggs and the eggs keep getting crushed or if the nest keeps failing, they will actually leave the area. That's it. I'm out of here. Oh, man. And the brown pelican is the state bird.

So for the state to not have brown pelicans, did it really make sense? Yeah, that's a bad PR. Yeah, that's a bad PR look. So there was this huge push to reestablish the population here. And the way that they did it was they actually brought a little over

a thousand brown pelican chicks from Florida. So for the most part, all of the pelicans in Louisiana right now are descendants of the one thousand or so Florida population. That is nuts. So they were Louisiana's like, we have to change the state bird or we have to get more pelicans in here immediately people Yes, and they did the latter which I'm glad to say that it was a huge success and It took a lot of effort and I'm so happy that everyone involved like did their part and right now we're just trying to Maintain their population and make sure it doesn't like decrease anymore and they're doing pretty good right now we're just trying to maintain their population and make sure it doesn't decrease anymore. And they're doing pretty good right now.

Their numbers could be a little bit better. It also depends on the fishery. So if there's less fish, less chicks are likely to survive, and therefore their population isn't going to grow as well. Okay, so what happens if you take a Florida Pelican and you move it to Louisiana? What if they don't like Louisiana's fish menu? Well, Juwita is collabing with the Nelson Lab at the University of Louisiana to figure

out their favorite fish. And it turns out their diet is 98% Menhaden, which is a silvery forked tail, oily filter feeding fish. Now Menhaden are a staple in a lot of wildlife diets, so protecting this fish protects the pelicans, as well as other sea and air critters that kind of pull up a seat to this feast that is a school of Menhaden. How can they see from the sky? I mean, I realize they're pelicans. They're very good at this, but like they're cruising along, right? They have this thing flapping in the wind. Their

face is flapping around. I'm picturing it, but it actually gets along, right? They have this thing flapping in the wind, their face is flapping around. I'm picturing it but it actually gets tucked, right? I don't know if tucked is the word I would use. It's not necessarily like swaying. I'm picturing it like a windbreaker. I don't know why. I'm trying to picture what it feels like. Is it like leather or denim or skin? These are questions that one can ask a Pelicanologist. What do their bills or that pouch, what is it? Do you have you ever touched it? What does it feel like? It basically feels like saggy skin, Like extremely saggy and wriggly skin. And it's really flexible. That seems so cute.

In case you ever need to brag about a pelican, just know that they can dive bomb fish at 40 miles an hour. And their beaks, which have been unchanged for like 30 million years, slice the water to handle that speed and that velocity. And that pouch, I read, acts like a little parachute underwater to help slow them down. So essentially they're fighter jets, but cooler and smellier. And what are their nests like? So their nests, they prefer to nest on taller shrubs because Louisiana floods quite often. So if they're on like taller vegetation, the chance that they're nest flooding is smaller

and they tend to use sticks. So they're maybe like two and a half feet in diameter. That's pretty big. Pretty large nests, maybe a little smaller. Now I'm trying to think. I've never actually measured a pelican nest, but they're pretty big. We're currently using drones to see

we can get accurate nest counts, and you can definitely see the nest from a drone shot. Do you have time? Do you mind getting asked patron questions? Oh, yes, yeah. Bring them. I'm so excited. Okay, so before we get to your questions,

a few words about sponsors who make it possible for allergies to donate to a cause of the allogist choosing each week. And this week, Chewita and all the folks at Black AF in STEM decided on backyardbasecamp.org, which is inspiring Black, Indigenous, and all people of color across Baltimore City to find nature where they are and empowering them to explore further. Backyard Base Camp also offers garden consultations and educator training and habitat discovery programs and more. They're awesome. So check them out and consider donating.

That is backyardbasecamp.org. And that donation to them was made possible by sponsors of the show, who you may hear about now. Okay, your Pelican questions. There's a lot of pelican questions. Okay, this is a question that I think I got the most. Elle McCall put it well, the spine thing out of their throats, please tell us everything and Evan Jude and Angela Manuel and Will Play West said, yes, please. Yes, yes, I'm dying to know. What's happening with their spine

out of their throats? Oh my gosh, I totally saw that. So it's only like part of their, it's like basically their neck vertebrae. So when they're doing that, they're actually just yawning. Yeah, yawning slash stretching. So while I'm taking my camera chat photos of them, that actually happens all the time. Really? And I record it in my data sheet as yawning. Oh my God. What other things are in your data sheet? Like yawning, like eye rolling, farting, like what do you have to jot down?

I basically write down any and all behavior that I see. So everything from feeding, you can actually tell when a Pelican chick is being fed because they're gonna feed straight out of the pouch. So the baby chick's head is in the parents' big pouch, basically, picking out fish. And one more thing on that vertebrae coming out of the neck. It's actually just their neck Showing through the bottom of their pouch when they yawn or when they sit weird, but essentially no their spine isn't coming out of their neck It's just kind of like pushing through the bottom of their pouch

normal something else I record is if there is any neighborly conducts happening so they'll sometimes bicker with one another. David stop acting like a disgruntled pelican. They're pretty territorial over their one little nest spot. Okay I looked up video of this and sometimes these little dinosaur floofs use their long bills to bite each other's bills. And it sounds like clacking a bunch of rulers together. But it looks like when my sisters and I would fight over barrettes. Diane P wants to know, do pelicans chew their food or do they just swallow it? And what's the largest prey a pelican can eat? Or is it mostly about

like eating a bunch of jelly beans at once instead of eating like a whole calzone. So they just do one big gulp. I'm sure if there's multiple fish in their pouch though, they'll probably do a few big gulps, they don't chew on anything. So it's whole fish that they are swallowing and regurgitating for their young to eat. Do they regurgitate it?

Is it like a slurry? No, it's actually a whole fish. Oh. Yeah. Dang. Okay. I thought it was for sure, I thought that was gonna be like a fish smoothie, but it's just like bloop, just like taking a granola bar right out of your own stomach. Yeah. Basically. This next one was asked by my pal Greg Wallach and Megan Walker, William Andrews, and Laura Merriman, who referenced the 1910 limerick by Dixon Lanier Merritt,

an ornithology enthusiast and a professional humorist. The limerick so goes, a wonderful bird is a pelican. His bill will hold more than his bellican. He can take in his beak enough food for a week. So, bill versus gastric capacity. Can a pelican's beak hold more than its bellican? Belly can. Are you aware of that joke?

Yes, we used to tell that to our fifth and sixth graders when I was a naturalist back in the day. So its beak can actually hold more than its belly can if you're counting the water volume. Oh, right. And then it just squirts it out and then it keeps the fish. Yes. That's a good way to remember it. Thomas and Windham wants to know if Pelican chicks toss their siblings out of the nest.

Not usually. I have never seen them in my cameras, but there is sibling rivalry in the sense that if there is not enough food to go around, the youngest chick tends to not get fed. Oh, okay. Yeah, so the order in that they were born is the order in which the parents will generally feed them. They can remember, but aren't,

are they like 10 hours apart? Like how soon they hatch kind of? It's more like a day or so. Okay. And it's not that the parents remember, it's more that a day or so okay and it's not that the parents remember it's more that the older chicks are louder they're more willing to like shove their siblings out of the way and like get to the parents first. Oh okay Megan Walker how tough are their insides and do the fish die right away it seems like a fresh floppy fish would do some damage to the insides. So I mean, just like our stomachs, their stomachs have

pretty high acid content. I'm not sure how fast the fish actually is like, stopped moving inside there. But I would assume it's pretty fast. Yeah. Okay, I look this up. And apparently, it's pretty acidic in there. And fish are not long for this world once in a bird belly. Ronan, last question, says the brown pelican is my mom's favorite bird, which is amazing. And I asked her if she has a question.

And so Ronan's mom wants to know, so do pelicans migrate or do they live in the same temperate location year round? So in Louisiana, we do have brown pelicans that hang around all year, but some of them actually do travel down to Central America. And that's wintertime? Yes. So outside of February through like August, they can be somewhere else. I love the idea that they're just like little snowbirds just having some fun. So they're on vacation. They just have a time share. I know I'm so jealous. They get to leave but I'm stuck in cold Louisiana. And you're just like waiting for them to come back. Yes,

that's literally my life like actually. What about your favorite thing about pelicans or your work? The fact that I get to be so close to these birds is wild because very few people get that opportunity. And being surrounded by 10,000 nesting birds, specifically pelicans, it's a wild experience. Are they loud? Pelicans are actually not that bad. It's all the other birds around them from the turn to the skimmers to the lapping gulls. They're super loud. But that's why I love taking volunteers out there when a pandemic isn't currently going on because I get to see my field site in a whole new light. And remember, oh yeah, most people don't get to see that happening.

And it's like the coolest thing. I just went out into the field for the first time yesterday and I took one of my committee members and another grad student, both of whom have not been on the islands. And I know they're team fish, but I'm just gonna say they were smiling from ear to ear. So. I know they're team fish, but I'm just gonna say they were smiling from ear to ear.

From one side of their pouch to the other. Yes. Oh, that's so exciting. Well, you have given me a new appreciation of pelicans and pelican babies and their floopy skin pouches and their face purses. I'm gonna call them face purses from now on. I love that. Oh my God, just dig it around.

Just dig around that handbag. Oh, look at this, another fish. You never know. I'm so glad I got a chance to talk to you. If I'm next time I come to Louisiana, I'm gonna look you up. I hope it's in field season. Oh my God, yes, we have to have it.

That would be awesome. So ask smart, Pelicanologist. That would be awesome. So ask smart Pelicanologists flappy, saggy, sappy, silly questions because they love Pelicans. And now so do you. Look at that. You love Pelicans. And Juita. You can follow her on Instagram or on Twitter

at Juita Martinez. I will put a link to those handles and to her website in the show notes. We are at Olog's on Twitter and Instagram. I'm Allie Ward with one L on both. Also linked is allieward.com slash smallagies, which has dozens more kid safe and shorter episodes that you can blaze through.

And thank you Mercedes Maitland of Maitland Audio for editing those. And since we like to keep things small around here, the rest of the credits are in the show notes. And if you stick around until the end of the episode, I give you a piece of advice. And this advice is that I always keep a little utensil kit in my backpack. It's got a bamboo fork and knife and a spoon in there, as well as a straw. And not only is that better for the planet to say, hey, I don't really need

to use any plastic utensils right now, but also sometimes you're just stuck and you need a spoon. One time I ate some peanut butter with a Q-tip in a hotel room and I said, this is never gonna happen again and now I travel with some silverware. So there you go. I hope that helps and thanks for listening and bye bye. Smell the cheese. Smell the cheese.

Smell the cheese. Smell the cheese. Smell the cheese. Smell the cheese. Smell the cheese. Smell the cheese. Smell the cheese. Smell the cheese. Smell the cheese. Smell the cheese. Znology? Znology?

Znology? Znology?