American White Pelican

How to find it

Be realistic: this is an accidental visitor, and a sighting would be a lucky surprise. Scan lakes, marsh waters and calm bays rather than the open seashore, since that is where it prefers to be in winter. Look for a very large white bird, and watch for black wing tips when it spreads its wings. Check every pelican carefully, because the common one is the Brown Pelican. Palo Verde National Park in Guanacaste is the only named place with a record.

How to recognise it

Start with size and colour. This is a very large white pelican, about 152 cm long and near 7 kg, and adults look snowy white on the ground.

The black flight feathers show only when the wings are spread, at the wing tips and along the back edge of the wing. The bill and legs are yellow-orange, and adults have a bright yellow bill, pouch and facial skin.

Breeding adults grow a flat upright plate on the upper bill, near the tip, and shed it after egg laying. Birds outside the breeding season lack it and have duller bill and foot colors. Non-breeding birds also show a grayish smudge on the nape, which is the plumage a winter visitor would wear.

Immatures are mostly white with a dusky head, neck and back, and a grayish bill and pouch.

What it sounds like

Recording: Jonathon Jongsma, CC BY-SA 3.0, source, read 5 Nov 2026.

Behaviour and diet

The American White Pelican feeds from the water surface, dipping the bill to catch fish. It often tips up like a huge dabbling duck, and it does not plunge-dive.

Groups sometimes herd fish into the shallows together. They form a half circle, flap the water and drive fish toward the shallows, then dip their heads to catch them. Range-wide, groups can number up to 3,500 birds and rest on the edges of water bodies. In Costa Rica, records are of lone birds, so group fishing is something to know about rather than expect.

Where it lives

On its wintering grounds this pelican rarely uses the open seashore. It prefers estuaries, bays and lakes.

A Costa Rican bird catalogue says it uses freshwater lakes and the open-water areas of marshes, and sometimes calm coastal bays. Birds move from inland North American breeding areas to Pacific and Gulf coasts, reaching as far south as Costa Rica. Its regular winter range runs south to Guatemala, which is why a Costa Rican record is unusual. The one named Costa Rican location is in Guanacaste.

When to see it

It is a rare, accidental visitor in the northern winter, and the only dated Costa Rican record, on 2 March 1977, falls in that season.

Similar birds

The only other pelican in Costa Rica is the Brown Pelican, locally called alcatraz. It is smaller and dark, and it plunge-dives, while the American White Pelican feeds from the water surface. The two differ in color, habitat and behavior.

Names and lore in Costa Rica

The Spanish name used in Costa Rica is Pelícano blanco americano. The Brown Pelican goes by the local name alcatraz, so do not mix the two.

Status and conservation

It is status A (accidental) on the AOCR list, an accidental visitor to Costa Rica, while the IUCN rates the species Least Concern.