In the fens of East Anglia have been found two humeri, one of them immature, of a true Pelecanus, a bird now no longer inhabiting middle Europe.
The ordinary pelican, the Onocrotalus of the ancients, to whom it was well known, and the Pelecanus onocrotalus of ornithologists, is a very abundant bird in some districts of south-eastern Europe, south-western Asia and north-eastern Africa, occasionally straying, it is believed, into the northern parts of Germany and France; but the possibility of such wanderers having escaped from confinement is always to be regarded,' since few zoological gardens are without examples.
A second and somewhat larger species, Pelecanus crispus, also inhabits Europe.
The genus Pelecanus as instituted by Linnaeus included the 1 This caution was not neglected by the prudent, even so long ago as Sir Thomas Browne's days; for he, recording the occurrence of a pelican in Norfolk, was careful to notice that about the same time one of the pelicans kept by the king (Charles II.) in St James's Park, had been lost.
The more common sea-birds are the Sula variegate or guano-bird, a large gull called the Larus modestus, the Pelecanus thayus, and the Sterna Ynca, a beautiful tern with curved white feathers on each side of the head.