Easy Life With Handouts Makes Monterey Pelicans ‘Pier Bums’

Rare brown California pelicans that hang around Fishermen’s Wharf have become bloated “pier bums,” panhandling tourists for food and losing their lust for life, experts say.

More than 300 pelicans have died since October, victims of a cholera-like epidemic they normally could resist, and many survivors are so weak and listless they fall off docks and wharf buildings.

“Look at those guys,” said Dave Hunter, of the state Department of Fish and Game, pointing at 20 pelicans crowded around fish scraps. “They slept in late, and they don’t even have to go out and look for (fish).”

Life has been so easy for the big birds that they refused to migrate south six weeks ago, said Dan Anderson of the University of California at Davis.

The easy feeding has made “pier bums” of the birds, he said, while they have become more aggressive, fight over scraps, chase children and bite some of the hands that feed them.

“They’re sticking around because they’re getting a free lunch,” said Jim Bennett of the Monterey County Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals.

Wildlife officials speculate that stress from overcrowding and competition for food at the wharf has made the birds susceptible to a bacteria.

“It’s a classic man-wildlife interaction,” Hunter said of tourists who feed the birds. “People think they’re doing the right thing but they’re really hurting the animals.”

The SPCA has posted “Please don’t feed the pelicans” signs along the wharf. Merchants last week agreed to close stands where tourists could buy 75-cent bags of bait fish sold as “sea lion food.” Instead of tossing the fish to sea lions barking on rocks off shore, the food often became another meal for pelicans.