Hi All: Wanted: Brown Pelicans counters in Gray's Harbor as well as along the Washington and Oregon coast. Sharnelle Fee (Wildlife Center of the North Coast) is interested in received Brown Pelican counts for the Grays Harbor area and elsewhere, preferably as adults, subadults and juveniles. The counts would be included in a longer term study of age ratios of pelicans that appear along the Oregon and Washington coast. Send counts to Sharnelle Fee (director at coastwildlife.org). An efficient way to record data would be to use ebird and include the age info in comments or the "edit species" comments. The data with georeference from ebird could then be downloaded and sent to Sharnelle. Individual counts with locality and date are fine too. Depending on numbers, it might be time consuming to age all birds seen so a total count with subsample of aged birds would be useful.
The Wildlife Center of the North Coast is a private non-profit 501(c)(3) that has provided wildlife support for 11 years to SW Washington and North to Central Oregon Coast. Vist www.coastwildlife.org for more info.
In April of this year, a juvenile (juvenal plumage) pelican brought into the center and the question of age ratios arose. The bird appears to be an early bird, but there are insufficient data for comparison. There has been an early influx of pelicans into California either as result of early breeding or failure (http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/2011/apr/26/buzz-rising-over-whether-local-pelican-population-/) which may indicate record numbers in the NW this year.
I'm not involved in the study so please send inquiries and data to Sharnelle (director at coastwildlife.org).
Gary Shugart, Slater Museum, University of Puget Sound, Tacoma & Vashon Island