White Pelicans Nesting at Honey Lake, California
NOTES WHITE PELICANS NESTING AT HONEY LAKE, CALIFORNIA IAN C. TAIT, 260 Cardinal Road, Mill Valley, California 94941 FRITZ L. KNOPF, School of Biological Sciences,Oklahoma State University, Stillwater, Oklahoma 74074 JOSEPH L. KENNEDY, W. F. Sigler and Associates,Inc., 900 West First Street, Reno, Nevada 89503 The breedingstatus of the White Pelican(Pelecanus erytbrorbyncbos) has been reviewedin papersby Thompson(1933), Liesand Behle(1966) and Sloan(1973). These papersshow that, although the number of breedingbirds may fluctuate considerablyin any one colony from year to year, coloniestend to remainin an- cestrallocations. For example,it appearsthat the only new colony established west of the Rockiesbetween 1965 and 1972 was at Crump Lake, Oregon. We were thus surprisedto find a White Pelican nesting colony on Hartson Reservoir, adjacent to Honey Lake, LassenCounty, California, in June 1976. Although pelicans reportedly laid eggsat Honey Lake in the early 1950s (A.M. Lapp pers. comm.), this appearsto be the first record of a productivecolony at this location. HoneyLake is a salinesink with a waterarea of approximately120 km2 in normal rainfall years and receivesthe flows of severalstreams draining the eastern escarpmentof the DiamondMountains at the northernend of the SierraNevada. It is locatedabout 80 km NNW of PyramidLake, Nevada,and 200 km SSE of the Klamath-ClearLake complex on the California-Oregonborder, the locationsof the closest White Pelican colonies. The colonydiscovered on 5 June1976 waslocated on a sparselyvegetated pen- insulaabout 50 m wide by 300 m long, runningparallel to the easternshoreline of HartsonReservoir. The pelicanbreeding area was shared with Double-crestedCor- morants(Pbalacrocorax auritus), Snowy Egrets (Egretta tbula), Black-crowned Night Herons (Nycticorax nycticorax), Ring-billedGulls (Larusdelawarensis) and CaspianTerns (Sterna caspia).
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