The post Watch Quick-Thinking Fishermen Free a Pelican Trapped by Fishing Line appeared first on A-Z Animals.

Watch the Video

Click here to watch on YouTube

Quick Take

• A pelican in Florida was found with fishing line wrapped around its bill, leaving it unable to open its mouth properly until fishermen stepped in to help.

• Fishing line and other human-made debris can seriously injure seabirds by preventing them from feeding, grooming, or moving normally.

• Brown pelicans rely mainly on fish, so a bill tangled shut is a life-threatening problem if the bird is not rescued quickly.

Birds face all sorts of threats in the wild. The threat of Mother Nature when storms happen, the need to find safe places to make their nests, and the threat of predators looking to hunt them down. However, other dangers are things like manmade materials that trap animals. Let’s see what happens to this pelican in the video above.

Pelican Sighted in Florida

The short YouTube video shown at the top of this blog post brings us to the sunny state of Florida, where some fishermen see a pelican. The Daily Mail YouTube page caught wind of this amazing rescue and shared it with their 3.81 million subscribers. This channel shares breaking news, world news, entertainment, science, education, and more.

Fishermen Help Pelican Out

As the video begins, we see a pelican perched up on a pier dock with his mouth wired shut. We can see fishing line wrapped around the pelican’s bill, with line dangling from it. The line appears to have tightened around the bill, preventing the bird from opening it normally.

Suddenly, a fisherman who spotted this injured pelican comes to help out. He stands there to watch the bird to see the best way to grab him.

Of course, one of the greatest fears here is first trying not to hurt the pelican. But, also secondly, he is trying not to hurt himself. Pelicans are not built to bite like raptors or parrots, but rescuers still have to be careful. A pelican can snap with its bill, and the hooked tip and sharp bill edges can cause cuts if the bird struggles.

The fisherman slowly approaches and grabs the bird by the leg and safely places him down, holding his neck and long wings. Another fisherman came to help and safely cut the fishing line off, and they freed the pelican.

How Big is a Pelican’s Wingspan?

Florida’s coastal pelican is the brown pelican. Brown pelicans usually weigh about 8 to 10 pounds and have a wingspan of roughly 6.5 to 7.5 feet. Pelicans as a family contain eight living species, but the much larger 11-foot-plus wingspans belong to species such as the Dalmatian pelican, not the brown pelican typically seen in Florida.

What Do Pelicans Eat?

Pelicans are carnivorous birds that eat mostly fish, although some species also take crustaceans, amphibians, and other small aquatic prey. Brown pelicans feed mainly on fish such as mullet, menhaden, herring, and minnows. Some pelican species may also eat crustaceans or amphibians, but fish make up the bulk of their diet. So, as we can imagine, pelicans need a free range of their beaks to eat. So, it wasn’t just a sad thing happening to this pelican; it was a death sentence. But luckily for the bird, a kind Samaritan stepped in to help.

Watch the Video

Click here to watch the video.

The post Watch Quick-Thinking Fishermen Free a Pelican Trapped by Fishing Line appeared first on A-Z Animals.