Residents of a number of villages in northern Poland have witnessed the unusual sight of a great white pelican – a species not native to Poland and which has rarely been seen in the country. The young male bird has been observed fighting with native storks over a rooftop nest.
The pelican was first spotted on 12 April in the village of Nożynko, around 80 kilometres west of Gdańsk, before then being seen sitting on the roof of a house in the village of Zalesie, around 100 kilometres to the south.
Broadcaster Polsat reports that residents of Zalesie even witnessed the pelican fighting with storks – a species native to Poland – over a rooftop nest, with the pelican eventually succeeding in evicting its rivals.
A visible yet healed injury on the pelican’s foot has led some to speculate that this was not the first time it had confronted storks.
Wildlife photographer Łukasz Haluch travelled almost a thousand kilometres from Rzeszów to capture the animal on the camera. “It is a bird that rarely visits Poland, so in my race [to photograph] as many species as possible, it is one of the key ones,” he told Polsat.
A 2 metre tall, 1.5 tonne stork nest discovered in Poland is a contender to win a contest for Europe's biggest.
Poland used to have Europe’s largest stork population but has lost that title to Spain after agricultural development caused numbers to decline https://t.co/wsP1NyUl5e
— Notes from Poland 🇵🇱 (@notesfrompoland) July 29, 2022
The pelican has since moved on to the village of Pieniężnica, 80 kilometres west of Zalesie, where it has again perched itself on the roof of a building.
“This is a real ornithological sensation,” wrote the local community centre in Rzeczenica, the district where Pieniężnica is located. “These birds in their natural environment do not live in Poland (they have occasionally appeared in Silesia), the closest they can be found is in southern Europe.”
Bartosz Smyk, an ornithologist from the Polish Society for the Protection of Birds, confirmed to broadcaster TVN24 that finding this species of pelican in northern Poland is an interesting phenomenon.
“It is a species that is associated with warm lands. It tends to be found in subtropical and tropical climates,” said Smyk, adding that, when these migratory birds do nest in Europe, it is typically by the Danube Delta, Bulgaria, or on the Ukrainian Black Sea coast.
“Flying a long distance for them is no problem. This particular individual is a juvenile two-year-old. They circle for long distances, looking for a location because they are not yet ready to breed,” he said.
The great white pelican – know as a pink pelican (pelikan różowy) in Polish – has a usual range between the south and west of Africa, South and Central Asia, and the Balkans. According to Smyk, there have been usually only one or two sightings of the species recorded annually in Poland in recent years.
Residents of a Polish village have been taking care of a stork that, unlike most of its kind, has not migrated south to Africa for the European winter https://t.co/3gcQHL7NvN
— Notes from Poland 🇵🇱 (@notesfrompoland) January 12, 2023
Main image credit: GCKSTiR Rzeczenica/Facebook
Anna Hackett is an assistant editor at Notes from Poland. She is a recent graduate of European Studies from Trinity College Dublin and has had previous journalistic experience with the Irish Independent News & Media group.
