Is feeding for the birds?

This post card from the St. Petersburg Museum of History shows tourists enjoying an activity that has always been a favorite: feeding the pelicans.

By JEFF KLINKENBERG
© St. Petersburg Times,
published December 13, 2001

Floridians and tourists alike love feeding the pelicans, and one seabird rehabilitator says it's a good thing. But another argues those who feed the birds may be loving them to death.

ST. PETERSBURG -- When it comes to pelicans, nothing is ever simple.

Grand and graceful in the air, they are comic and clumsy on terra firma. For many of us, they symbolize Florida's exotic waterfront. Yet many jaded longtime residents who have been there, done that, consider a pelican a cliche with feathers. For tourists a pelican is a miracle on wings.

Pesticides and pollution almost killed off North America's brown pelican population a half century ago. Now the big birds are as common as barnacles on pilings.

Florida gift shops might go out of business without pelican postcards, pelican statues and pelican Christmas ornaments. Every novice Florida artist feels compelled to paint a portrait of a pelican. For good reason: Even a bad pelican painting will sell.

[Times photo: Andrew Innerarity] Lee Fox, who runs Pinellas Seabird Rehabilitation Center, changed her views about feeding pelicans after working with the birds for a while.

Say the word "feed" and most waterfront Floridians, without thinking much, probably will add "the pelicans."

Now even something as seemingly innocent as feeding pelicans -- a Florida tradition, after all -- has become complicated.

If you want to start a boxing match among bird lovers, just say, "Don't feed the pelicans."

Those can be fighting words. Some people passionately believe pelicans would starve without human intervention and see themselves as good Samaritans.

Nope, goes the other side of the argument. Feeding pelicans is not only a waste of time (pelicans were thriving long before the arrival of Homo sapiens on Earth); it actually harms the birds.

As you might expect, certain bird lovers are loath to be accused of pelican murder.

King Pelican

Singing for their supper Is it okay to feed songbirds?

In calmer moments, people opposed to feeding pelicans argue that artificial feeding most likely changes natural behavior. They say a somewhat domesticated bird is more likely to hang around people -- and get hurt -- than a wild bird that instinctively keeps its distance.

Last year a few ornithologists floated the idea that a law was needed to prohibit the feeding of pelicans. But the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission backed away. Too controversial. One reason was opposition from the main man, King Pelican himself.

Ralph Heath.

"These people who say we shouldn't feed pelicans are a hoot," he declares. "They don't know what they're talking about."

Three decades ago, after rescuing an injured pelican, Heath established Suncoast Seabird Sanctuary at Indian Shores. It's the granddaddy of waterfowl hospitals and perhaps the most famous in the country.

Now 57, Heath has been featured in Smithsonian magazine and appeared in one of those celebrity profiles for Dewar's Scotch. Even Charles Kuralt, the late On the Road CBS reporter, made a stop at 18328 Gulf Blvd.

Heath garnered favorable publicity for decades. He also was one of the Suncoast's most eligible bachelors. Women, from starlets to barefoot sanctuary volunteers, swooned over him. He married twice -- one wife was a millionaire heiress -- but both unions ended in divorce.

He was also a hard worker, jumping into his boat, bouncing over the waves and landing on a mangrove island to search for injured pelicans. He found them aplenty.

Sometimes they already were dead. Tangled in fishing line, they'd perished from starvation. Others had lost wings or feet because fish line had cut off their circulation. Heath discovered that more than 80 percent of all pelicans in the wild bore scars from encounters with fish line and hooks.

America took notice. After years of exposure to poisons and pesticides, pelicans were only just recovering from near extinction. "Pelicans are in dire straits," Heath told people. "Saving just one is important."

Pelicans nursed back to health were released. Pelicans too injured for release were shipped to zoos or kept at the sanctuary, which remains a tourist attraction.

The Suncoast Seabird Sanctuary became one of the first wildlife rehab places on Earth to coax captive pelicans into breeding. Their offspring, often healthy, were released into the wild or shipped to states that had lost their pelican populations.

Every morning and afternoon, Heath's employees or armies of volunteers fed wild pelicans on the beach. This was great public relations for the sanctuary. Tourists loved snapping photographs, and many coughed up dollars -- some donated thousands -- to keep Heath's operation going.

But Heath says feeding the pelicans wasn't just about public relations. It was about keeping pelicans healthy.

"It takes young pelicans a while to catch on to growing up," he always said. "They're not very good at feeding in the wild. This keeps them going."

Some folks suspected that Heath's true love was money. In fact, they wondered if he was spending more on luxuries -- yachts, airplanes and waterfront homes -- than on birds. Yet many who knew him best said no. His true love is, was and always will be birds. Knock on Heath's door and he answers, disheveled, his crop of curly hair resembling a sandpiper's nest. "I was just feeding my chickens," he announces. Heath lives in a beautiful beachfront home behind the sanctuary. Except for his birds, he is alone.

He has five chickens, 11 cockatiels, three ring-necked doves, two pigeons, a white dove and a royal tern. All except the chickens are disabled by injury. All have cages, but most have the run of his house.

Bird droppings are ruining the carpet. A sheet over the sofa has saved most of the fabric but not all. Doves fly from light fixtures to Heath's head. His T-shirt is stained by dung.

"It's good luck to get pooped on," he says with a smile.

He introduces his birds, one by one. Scientists might cringe at anthropomorphism, but not Heath. They all have names, and they all have stories. Somebody threw a rock so hard at a dove that its eye was knocked out. The royal tern was hit by a car; it will never fly again. These poor babies were born with twisted feet. Their mother kicked them out of the nest -- that's how nature takes care of the unfit. Heath gives the unfit a home.

The sanctuary has cages full of damaged owls and hawks and a variety of water birds. But its hundreds of pelicans are the main attraction. Even on a weekday afternoon, tourists flock in to snap photographs and drop money into the donation boxes.

Many caged pelicans are in the process of building nests. Even wild pelicans, born in captivity here but released, return to the sanctuary to construct nests on top of the cages. They are more comfortable at the sanctuary than on the mangrove islands where the wildest pelicans roost. One reason might be that they are fed daily at the sanctuary.

"Yes, we feed them," Heath says, voice getting loud. "You know what? Minutes after we feed them they fly off and we see them diving on minnows offshore. So how can these so-called experts say we're changing natural behavior?"

A great blue heron, squawking overhead, catches Heath's attention.

"One time I was sitting on a dock at John's Pass eating a hot dog. I fed a piece of hot dog to a great blue heron. That admission will create panic, shock waves and I hope a few heart attacks in the scientific community. "Horrors! He fed a hot dog to a heron!' But you know what? The heron didn't eat the hot dog. It dropped it in the shallow water.

"Then the heron stood watching. Eventually, some minnows swam up to nibble the hot dog. The heron grabbed the minnows and ate them. Ha! It used the hot dog as bait! In my opinion, seabirds are smarter than people who say we must never feed them."

Fish stories

When it comes to pelicans, winter is the important season. As more tourists arrive, pelicans become the most photographed critters in the state. In most cases, pelicans remain wary, preening for pictures from a piling or the branch of a mangrove.

But in some cases the pelican flies down for a handout. Throughout Florida, especially in tourist towns, feeding pelicans can be lucrative. Even at the Pier in downtown St. Petersburg, the bait shack charges $5 for a bucket of minnows. Pelicans, waiting nearby on pilings, day and sometimes even night, seem to recognize that the bucket means a free meal.

But tourists are undependable. The Pelican Fund, a Heath-influenced organization, considers the feeding of pelicans a mission of mercy. When the weather turns cold, members gather at Spa Beach, next to the Pier, with buckets filled with minnows. Pelicans by the hundreds zoom in for a free meal. The Pelican Fund people collect donations to pay for the minnows.

"We feed them because during especially cold weather, the minnows dive deep and the pelicans can't get to them and have nothing to eat," says retired veterinarian Harold Albers, a longtime Heath associate who helped start the Pelican Fund years ago. "I don't think it harms anything."

Rich Paul, an ornithologist for Florida Audubon, patrols Tampa Bay daily in his boat. He sees things differently. "First of all," he says, "pelicans already have an adaptation for dealing with cold weather. It's called migration. They fly south. The problem with feeding them when it's very cold is they don't fly south. Then you start seeing pelicans with frostbite -- their bills and their feet literally freeze."

He also brings up evolution. "It's a hard truth, but some birds -- the weak ones -- aren't meant to survive. Feeding them can hurt the species as a whole."

Paul is part of a growing movement of environmentalists who love wildlife but don't get emotionally attached to individual animals. One reason is science. Another is changing times.

Years ago, for example, anybody who visited a national park hoped to see a bear. Motorists loved nothing more than tossing a hot dog or chips out the window to a bruin. But the problem began when the trained bears mistook hands for handouts. Mama bears often brought cubs that learned to panhandle as well. And the junk food diet was bad for bears. Now all parks prohibit feeding bears.

A decade ago, Everglades National Park banned the artificial feeding of pelicans, to protect not only the pelicans but besieged anglers. For years, anglers would fillet their catch and throw the scraps to an army of pelicans waiting below.

Eventually the pelicans became impatient. They patrolled the seawall waiting for a handout; anglers who failed to come across could be treated to a painful bite. Other pelicans stole the catch from buckets or landed on the cleaning table to snatch fillets.

Anglers grew to fear pelicans more than even mosquitoes. The park service had to build special fish-cleaning rooms so anglers could fillet their catch in peace. Pelicans had to learn how to be pelicans again -- or perish.

A shoe in the gullet

When it comes to pelicans, Lee Fox has one rule: "Don't become a welfare agent for a bird that can take care of itself."

Fox and her husband moved to Pinellas County in 1983. Their kids grew up and she suffered the empty nest syndrome. She loved birds and became one of Ralph Heath's volunteers.

"Helping seabirds got into my blood," she says.

Eventually she opened her own rehab center on Tierra Verde, not out of competition with Heath but because she saw a need for a facility in the southern part of the county. At first, she saw nothing wrong with feeding pelicans and other seabirds. As years went by she did.

"I saw birds dying of malnourishment because they had learned to survive on a diet of hot dogs, cheese and potato chips. I have never seen a pelican or a heron at a deli counter yet."

Fox is 60, born in New Jersey, and feisty when she gets mad. And mad she gets.

"I know too much to keep my mouth shut," she says. "I know other people have other opinions. But I have had to rehabilitate too many pelicans that hang around fishermen and get hurt to be quiet.

"People throw fish carcasses to pelicans. Wrong! Never do that! Pelicans in the wild eat small minnows. But they'll try to swallow a big carcass, and the carcass will get caught in their throats. I've found pelicans with rotten fish stuck in their throats."

In 1993, after an oil spill in Tampa Bay, Fox led a coalition of wildlife rehabilitators that saved sick seabirds by the thousands. For her work, she won 11 awards from the federal government, the state and environmental organizations. Last month Tampa Electric Co. announced it was leasing 6 acres, for $10 a year, to Fox at its manatee education center at Apollo Beach. Fox is collecting donations and applying for grants to build a $600,000 seabird hospital and education center.

Fox is known as an expert in scoring grants. A few years ago the state gave her money for more than 200 signs that tell people why feeding pelicans is a bad idea. She'd gotten sick of patrolling the Sunshine Skyway Fishing Pier to rescue pelicans with feet damaged from running up and down the pier from handout to handout.

The signs also tell onlookers how to help a pelican that has been snagged by a fish line. The answer is: Don't cut the line. Gently reel it in and try to remove the line or fish hook without getting hurt yourself. Line can be deadly to pelicans when it gets tangled in the trees where they roost.

Recently she received a grant to design a special kind of fish-cleaning table. In the middle of the table is a big pipe that leads directly to the water. The angler throws the carcass into the pipe. The pelican doesn't get a chance to grab it.

"There's been a lot of public education about not feeding pelicans, but not enough," Fox says. "Too many are still confused and feeding them."

Not long ago she visited a pier at Pass-a-Grille where some people enjoy feeding pelicans. One pelican seemed to be choking. It had mistaken somebody's shoe for a fish. The sneaker, sans foot, was lodged in the pelican's throat. Fox saved the pelican and uses the shoe as a prop in her education programs.

"People get very angry at me," she says. "Feeding seabirds, especially pelicans, is something lots of folks enjoy, and they don't want to hear otherwise. But I'm not going to pamper their desire by lying and making them feel good. I tell them if you're feeding pelicans you must really not love pelicans because you're doing them harm.

"Of course, some people just don't know it's wrong. So I try to educate them. But some people know better and feed seabirds anyway. What it boils down to I think is they're doing it to make themselves feel good."

The phone rings in her house. The caller says a pelican is entangled in fishing line. Fox says she'll be there ASAP.

"Sometimes I feel like I have wheels on my feet because I'm always on the go," she says. "But I love what I do."

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