New Pelicans arrive!
Odin and Logan join Rogue and Storm on Pelican Cove!
New Dalmatian pelicans Odin and Logan join Rogue and Storm at Pelican Cove!
On Thursday 20 March we welcomed two new pelicans to their new home at Pelican Cove. Odin, aged 2.5 years with the ZLG green leg band, and Logan, aged 1.5 years with the JBC green band, first arrived in the UK from a zoo in Budapest in February 2025. They finished their quarantine period in the UK and then continued an isolation period at WWT Slimbridge in the Conservation Breeding Unit before joining us at WWT Arundel on March 20. The two new birds will stay in the new Pelican Barn for a week until they acclimatise to our site.
Contractors Landmark Construction finished building our a pelican "barn" on our Pelican Cove exhibit earlier this month. The shelter is now housing these two new male Dalmatian Pelicans who join our two female pelicans, Rogue and Storm, in the exhibit.
Our Pelicans are named after characters in the Marvel universe - the new males were named by Collections & Grounds Supervisor Ben Perrett (Logan) and Molly Foote-Wyman, Trainee Keeper (Odin).
Dalmatian pelicans were once a familiar sight on UK wetlands 2000 years ago, but they became extinct as their wetland homes were drained for farms and people hunted them for food. They are the largest and rarest of the pelican species. Currently wild Dalmatian pelicans migrate between central Eurasia, Taiwan, the Persian Gulf, and Siberia.
The pelicans are currently at home in our Pelican Cove exhibit with a huge pond and a pair of islands for them to perch on to preen their feathers and sunbathe. The Pelican Barn shelter provides an area for the birds to be off-show for periods and a space for to enable us to do their health checks and weighing them on the exhibit.
Rogue and Storm on Pelican Cove while their barn was being constructed.
