Brown Pelicans in St. Petersburg: City Bird and Nesting Islands

The brown pelican has been the official bird of St. Petersburg since 2020, and the city's St. Pete Pier describes it as a signature emblem of the city (The St. Pete Pier).

The most visible St. Petersburg pelican is not a live one. At the entrance to the St. Pete Pier stands Myth (Red Pelican), a 10-foot-tall sculpture by Los Angeles artist Nathan Mabry, fabricated from thick aluminum plate with a satin-painted finish in an origami style; smaller red pelicans are placed around the Pier district (The St. Pete Pier).

The live birds use the kinds of places found along the St. Petersburg waterfront. FWC describes the brown pelican as a seabird that spends most of its time on or near the ocean and lists beaches, sandbars, docks, dredge spoil islands, estuarine islands and mangrove islands as its habitat (FWC). FWC also says feeding seabirds makes them congregate where they are more likely to get hooked or tangled in fishing line, which is why the later sections deal with piers (FWC).

The St. Petersburg pelican is not endangered: federal records show it Delisted due to Recovery, and FWC lists it as no longer listed in Florida as of January 11, 2017 (USFWS ECOS; FWC).

FWC still names the brown pelican, the bird of St. Petersburg, in the state Imperiled Species Management Plan, so it remains part of Florida conservation planning even without a listing (FWC).

ECOS lists a separate Southeast Region entry for the U.S. Atlantic coast, Florida and Alabama, so the Florida birds came off the federal list with the southeastern population in 1985, 24 years before the 2009 final rule removed the species from the federal list (USFWS ECOS). FWC gives the bird a Florida Natural Areas Inventory rank of G4/S3, apparently secure globally but rare in the state, and an IUCN status of Least Concern (FWC).

Delisting did not remove protection for St. Petersburg birds. The federal Migratory Bird Treaty Act still covers them, and so does the FWC rule against taking wildlife, 68A-4.001 in the Florida Administrative Code (FWC). One federal page has not caught up: the Pinellas National Wildlife Refuge home page, for islands inside St. Petersburg, still refers to endangered brown pelicans nesting there (USFWS refuge page), which conflicts with the agency's own delisted status.

FWC blames the pesticide DDT for the steep drop of the 1960s and 1970s and credits the ban on DDT for the comeback. Its list of present dangers runs from loss and degradation of habitat, rising seas, pollution and vanishing coastal wetlands to predators drawn by coastal development that eat eggs and young, among them raccoons, rats, coyotes, opossums, feral hogs and crows (FWC). On the St. Petersburg refuge keys, raccoons are the predator the federal nesting record below names.

The closest protected nesting islands are the Pinellas National Wildlife Refuge, mangrove keys in Boca Ciega Bay that lie within the St. Petersburg city limits and are closed to the public year-round (USFWS Tampa Bay Refuges; USFWS).

The refuge was established in 1951 as a breeding ground for colonial birds (USFWS). It began with Indian and Tarpon Keys; Listen Key, Little Bird Key, Mule Key, Jackass Key and part of Whale Island were added in 1981, and the rest of Whale Island in 1994, for seven mangrove islands off St. Petersburg (USFWS). The service places Pinellas Key 1 1/2 miles off-shore just outside of St. Petersburg and closes the islands year-round to all public use because of their small size and critical importance to coastal species; the refuge phone is (352) 563-2088 through Crystal River NWR (USFWS).

How big the St. Petersburg colony is today is unclear, because two federal sources disagree. The refuge home page says Tarpon Key hosts the largest brown pelican rookery in the state of Florida (USFWS). The service's Tampa Bay Refuges tearsheet says Tarpon Key and Whale Island once held the third largest pelican rookery in the nation, with as many as 693 pairs in 1995, that birds stopped nesting there by 2005 because of raccoons, and that continued trapping of raccoons has recently promoted some nesting (USFWS tearsheet). Neither gives a current count.

At the mouth of Tampa Bay, the same tearsheet says over 1000 pairs of pelicans have nested at one time on Egmont Key in summer, and that pelicans use the island to fish and loaf in winter (USFWS tearsheet). Little Bird Key, one of the St. Petersburg refuge islands, has provided locally important nesting habitat for pelicans, cormorants and herons in recent years, according to the same document.

Around St. Petersburg, inside the 20 N to 30 N latitude band FWC uses, pelicans nest from winter into spring, in colonies of several hundred pairs built mostly in mangroves (FWC).

A St. Petersburg pelican clutch is one, two or three white eggs. Both parents sit on them for as long as 30 days and then feed the chicks, which keep to the nest area for roughly 70 days (FWC). A young pelican is not ready to breed until somewhere between its third and fifth year.

Age shows in the feathers of St. Petersburg pelicans. FWC describes juveniles as brown over almost the whole body, with a whitish belly, while adults in breeding dress carry a bright yellow head and a white neck that dull after the season (FWC). The USFWS tearsheet adds that chicks are white and turn brown within a few months, then regrow white crown and neck feathers on reaching maturity (USFWS).

The feeding style is the giveaway on Tampa Bay. FWC calls the brown pelican the smallest of the world's six pelican species, yet it can reach 48 inches in length and spread 84 inches of wing; instead of herding fish in groups, it dives headfirst from heights as great as 50 feet and then tilts its head to drain the pouch (FWC).

Feeding pelicans is illegal on St. Petersburg piers and seawalls, as everywhere in Florida, under FWC rule 68A-4.001 (FWC).

FWC's reason, for St. Petersburg as for the rest of Florida, is entanglement: feeding draws pelicans to the spots where they are most likely to be hooked or tangled in fishing line (FWC). Its rules for anglers are to discard fish carcasses in marked repositories or lidded trash cans rather than in the water, cast away from birds and shoreline vegetation, collect loose monofilament until it can be thrown out, keep bait buckets covered, take unused bait home and tell other anglers how to avoid hooking birds (FWC).

The carcass rule applies at every St. Petersburg fishing spot. FWC says fish carcasses are often larger than the bait fish pelicans normally eat, and their larger bones and spines can puncture a bird's throat or digestive tract (FWC). FWC asks anyone interested in placing signage at a pier, marina or other fishing location to contact its regional office (FWC).

When a St. Petersburg angler hooks a pelican, FWC's instruction is to bring the bird in and free it rather than snip the line, summed up in its reel, remove, release slogan (FWC Hooked a Bird).

On a St. Petersburg pier, FWC wants the line wound in steadily with no yanking, and the pelican left floating until someone can scoop it up in a hoop net, because hauling it up the rail can hurt it badly (FWC). Whoever holds the bird keeps the bill a little apart so air gets in, and draping cloth over the head settles it. To free the hook, the barb is snipped off and the shank slid back out, and any wrapped line is trimmed away and placed in a monofilament recycling bin or cut into small pieces for a lidded trash can (FWC).

A swallowed hook or a severe injury is a job for a seabird rehabilitator. FWC points St. Petersburg anglers to its app to locate the closest seabird rehabilitator or someone who can drive the bird there, and asks that the person wait with the pelican in the meantime (FWC).

The Seaside Seabird Sanctuary, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit that describes its mission as rescue, rehab and release, is at 18328 Gulf Blvd., Indian Shores, phone (727) 391-6211 (Seaside Seabird Sanctuary). Its own site gives two sets of visiting hours, 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. daily in one place and open every day from 8 to 4 with free admission and parking in another, so a call ahead settles which is current (Seaside Seabird Sanctuary).

Last verified: October 18, 2026, when this guide's pelican sources were fetched again: the St. Pete Pier art page, the USFWS ECOS listing record, three Pinellas refuge documents, three FWC pages and the Seaside Seabird Sanctuary site.