St James’s Park? Is that the one with all the pelicans? Yes, it is. And for the first time in over 360 years, there are chicks too.
London is no stranger to unusual creatures. There are the pesky parakeets darting around the capital’s skies, and Richmond Park’s stunning deer. But it’s the pelicans we’ve been obsessed with lately, and 2026 has given us a genuinely good reason why.
Why are there pelicans in St James’s Park
The well-beaked birds were first introduced in 1664, when the Russian ambassador presented a pair of them to Charles II.
It wasn’t as peculiar a gift as it sounds. Charles I had aviaries in the park, and kept camels and elephants there too. The road bordering the south side of the park is still named Birdcage Walk as a result.
Today the park is home to six pelicans: Sun, Moon, Star, Tiffany, Isla and Gargi.
They live on Duck Island, ironically. It’s certainly not pigeon island, more than once a pelican has swallowed one of the city’s ubiquitous birds whole, to the horror of onlookers. The island suits them because it’s far from predators and lets them snack on fish from the lake between meals.
Pampered pelicans
They’re fed by the park keeper daily, usually between 2.30pm and 3pm, next to Duck Island Cottage. Head down and you can watch.
They’re treated to around 1.5-2kg of fish each per day, mackerel, herring, whiting and roach among their favourites, though in summer they tend to get a little less since the ponds are brimming with newborn fish they can scoop up themselves.
Most of the pelicans have had their wings clipped, but Gargi is the exception, a genuinely wild pelican. She landed in a garden in Southend in 1996 and was taken in by the garden’s owner, who quickly realised keeping a pelican was an expensive responsibility and asked Royal Parks to take her on. She’s lived in St James’s Park ever since, and while she’s known to occasionally fly over to London Zoo to pinch a second dinner from the animals there, she always comes home.
2026’s genuine milestone: the first chicks born in the park’s history
For the first time since the pelicans arrived in 1664, chicks have actually hatched in St James’s Park.
Four chicks were born starting 17 May 2026, to parents including Star and Gargi, with the adult males in the group also involved in raising them. The chicks hatched featherless and completely dependent on the adults, and all four survived their first crucial month, a result that reportedly took even the team who care for them by surprise.
Mark Wasilewski, manager of St James’s Park, told The Guardian the birth was an entirely unprecedented situation for the team. The likely trigger was almost accidental: an avian flu precaution earlier in the year saw all six adult pelicans moved into an isolated part of Duck Island, and the enforced closeness during that period appears to have encouraged nesting behaviour once they were released back into the wider park in April.
Royal Parks added an extra morning feeding slot on top of the usual afternoon one to help the parents keep their strength up while regurgitating food for the chicks. The chicks weren’t named as of the most recent update, and are expected to take to the water with the adults at around nine to twelve weeks old, which puts them right around visiting age as this piece goes to print. Worth timing a visit for.
It’s a proper piece of history in the making, and a fitting one too. Back in the 1990s, Lord Campbell of Croy raised concerns in Parliament that no pelicans had been born on Duck Island in 300 years, arguing the birds deserved “the patter of little webbed feet.” Another minister pointed out that pelicans typically only breed in groups larger than ten, and St James’s has never had more than a handful. Three decades on, it seems they finally figured it out anyway.
A few facts about pelicans
Pelicans are the second-largest bird species in the world, with a wingspan of up to three and a half metres and a weight of up to 15kg. Their average lifespan in the wild is 15-25 years, though they’ve been known to live much longer in captivity.
They have personalities just like the rest of us. The more outgoing among them are known to join people for a rest on a park bench, people-watch from the pond railings, and even brush up on their family history, more than one has been spotted loitering at an actual pelican crossing.
Our favourite pelican fact: the collective noun for a group of pelicans is a scoop.
Turbulent histories
Since 1664, more than 40 pelicans have lived in the park. It hasn’t always been smooth sailing, they’ve been the subject of parliamentary debate, quarantines, and maybe even Cold War intrigue.
By the 1970s there was only one solitary pelican left in the park, known as the Lady in the Lake. The population has recovered considerably since.
The birds haven’t always stayed put, either. In 1929, two pelicans escaped, one was later spotted in a tree in Chelmsford, and local farmers were warned not to shoot it. Decades later, in the 1950s or 60s, one pelican reportedly got caught in a sidewind over Horse Guards Parade, was blown clean across Whitehall, and crashed through a window of the old War Office building, interrupting a meeting of the Chiefs of Staff mid-session.
Pelicans and the Cold War
At the height of the Cold War, the Russian ambassador extended a diplomatic hand by offering fresh pelicans for the park. Word got back to the Americans, who decided they had to match the gesture, a move that only added to the tension.
As the story goes, the pelicans the Americans sent didn’t get on with the Russian ones. There was plenty of quiet speculation about sabotage on either side, until it turned out the American pelicans were simply a saltwater species that didn’t take to St James’s fresh water. Once that was sorted, the Americans sent a fresh batch that settled in fine alongside their Russian counterparts. True to the era, neither side ever formally confirmed the story.
The pelicans today
The park’s pelicans have had more than one brush with bird flu precautions in recent years, most recently the isolation period earlier in 2026 that, as it turned out, led directly to this year’s chicks. They’ve come through each scare in good health and back out on public display within weeks.
St James’s Park is free to enter, so you can visit the pelicans without spending a penny, and the park is open from 5am to midnight.
The London x London Take: this is the best the pelicans story has been in decades, a 360-year wait finally paying off with four chicks hatching on Alastair’s watch, more or less. Time a visit for feeding time around 2.30pm, and keep an eye out for the chicks themselves, they should be old enough to join the adults on the water right around now.
Need to know
- Where: Duck Island, St James’s Park, London SW1A 2BJ
- Nearest station: St James’s Park (short walk to Duck Island)
- When: Park open 5am-midnight daily; pelican feeding around 2.30-3pm
- Price: Free
