First records of Brown Pelican (Pelecanus occidentalis) nesting in Polk County, Florida
Abstracts
Brown Pelicans nest widely along much of Florida’s coast, breeding at scattered sites from Port Orange (Volusia Co.) on the Atlantic coast south to Florida Bay and the Lower Keys and north along Gulf coast to St. Andrews Bay (Bay Co.). In coastal colonies, they typically nest in mangroves or Brazilian pepper canopies on both natural and dredged spoil material islands. Brown Pelicans were first reported nesting inland on a dredged spoil island at Clewiston Spit West, Lake Okeechobee, Hendry County, in 1991 and 1992. Although there have been anecdotal reports of Brown Pelicans nesting inland in central Florida on some lakes and phosphate pits in the phosphate-mining region, inland nesting has not been confirmed previously in Polk County. We observed a Brown Pelican pair nesting in a Brazilian pepper tree on a linear dredged spoil material island in freshwater Lake Somerset in Lakeland, about 50 km inland from the Gulf of Mexico coast, in 2008, after which they nested persistently at this site through the present (mean 2.0 pairs, SD = 2.7, n = 7, 2008-2014).
