Number of American white pelicans overwintering at Isabella Lake has multiplied
Jan. 29—Five days a week Kern River Valley resident Eva Hollmann is out on the surface of Isabella Lake, windsurfing when the wind is right, but often rowing the wherry she built with her own hands for exercise, litter retrieval and bird watching.
What has been impossible to miss for the 75-year-old retired yacht builder has been the quadrupling, or even quintupling of the numbers of American white pelicans that overwinter at the mountain lake in northeastern Kern County.
Rather than seeing a few dozen of these majestic inland waterfowl, which had long been the norm at the lake, this winter and last, the pelicans began arriving by the hundreds.
"Last March, I was putting away my windsurfing gear one late afternoon, and spotted pelicans swimming toward me single file. There were many, so I started counting — and eventually quit to run and grab my camera after I had gone past 200, with more coming," Hollmann said.
The long-beaked water birds had been feeding on trout that had been planted that morning in a little cove immediately downwind of her.
After she was able to capture several photos, the pelicans suddenly flew off all at once.
"An amazing experience," she remembered.
American white pelicans are easily distinguished from brown pelicans — the species often seen on California's Central Coast — by their white plumage with black flight feathers and yellow bills and legs, said Abigail Gwinn, a wildlife biologist with the California Department of Fish and Wildlife.
Brown pelicans rarely stray far from the coast, Gwinn said in an email.
But American white pelicans "are an inland species and breed in the interior of North America on islands of shallow lakes and wetlands," she said. "The pelicans we are seeing at Isabella Lake could be from any of the inland breeding colonies."
These water birds can fly long distances.
"Pelicans that breed at Pyramid Lake in Nevada have been documented flying over the Sierra Nevada to forage in the Central Valley during the nesting season with active nests," Gwinn said.
Of course, Isabella Reservoir did not exist before the 1950s when Isabella Dam was completed. But pelicans once had rich habitat across the state, including in Kern County.
"Thousands of white pelicans once nested in California's historic lakes prior to European colonization, including Tulare Lake," Gwinn said.
Breeding colonies were also known to be at Buena Vista Lake, south of Bakersfield, until the 1950s.
"Habitat destruction through water diversion and land reclamation for agriculture and development greatly reduced nesting habitat, which reduced white pelican populations," she said. "California's nesting white pelicans are now primarily found in the Klamath Basin, though they use other water bodies throughout the state for foraging and roosting habitat during the nonbreeding season."
Gwinn seemed pleased with Hollmann's photo, as it backed up her pelican count at Isabella.
Neil Clipperton, who works with Fish and Wildlife's Non-Game Migratory Bird Program, said there are regular counts of white pelicans as part of the monitoring strategy for the western population of the species.
