Brown Pelican

The brown pelican is the state bird of Louisiana, where I was born and lived much of my life. As a boy I saw no pelicans. Because of the use of pesticides, the brown pelican became an endangered species throughout the U.S. This is why it was included in the four stamps in the middle of this album page.

It was terrible to have a bird species that was so abundant be on the edge of extinction in such a short time, in a twenty year period starting in 1940. By 1963, there were no brown pelicans in Louisiana. The Louisiana Wildlife and Fisheries struggled to reintroduce the bird from 1968 to 1980. Additionally, it was the work of the Lake Pontchartrain Basin Foundation – now called the Pontchartrain Conservancy – that was instrumental in cleaning Lake Pontchartrain and surrounding waterways that brought back all of the wildlife: birds, fish, reptiles, and mammals. Now I often see brown and white pelicans, sometimes a squadron of over twenty of them, as well as many other birds.

The Foundation accomplished this in many ways. For one, with legistlation to stop commercial dredging of the Lake for shale for use in building roads. They also conducted an extensive program to educate the public about pouring chemical waste into storm drains and in their back yards since all of that flows into the Lake. The forced city of New Orleans to eliminate houses built on the Lake, and forced the surrounding parishes to provide sewerage lines to home built along the shore, on islands and peninsulas, removing septic tanks from their properties at no charge to the homeowners.

The state has also peitioned the Army Corps of Engineers to minimmize the use of the Bonnet Carré Spillway and similar flood diversion system. The Bonnet Carré is used to lower the level of the Mississippi River by allowing it to flow into the Lake. The River has many toxic chemicals in it from ships and industrial activities from across the country.

Another project of the state, championed by the Foundation was to collect discarded Christmas tree to use as landfill in parts of the marsh surrounding the Lake and other waterways and the coast that have been erroding. The result has been tremendous, allowing for more breeding and feeding areas for all wildlife, including pelicans.

Note

The stamps of the birds and animals on this album page are nice. I like them. But I don’t like the one at the top with a magnifying glass and the first U.S. postage stamp of Benjamin Franklin. I don’t like stamps about stamps, Nor do I like stamps about stamp collecting. It seems almost ridiculous to design stamps with images of other stamps, or to collect stamps about collecting stamps. I feel like it leads to infinite regression – like the old Pet Milk can showing a mother cow pouring milk for her child. She’s holding a can of Pet Milk with the same image containing a smaller can with the same image and so on. It’s maddening.

Contains 11 spots: own 11 – 11 unused, 0 used.
Page is finished.
Album or Web Page Last changed May 3, 2025

Stamp Details

The table below lists information about the stamps shown on this page of Lighthouse’s stamp album. For more details about a particular stamp, click on its description. That will take you to the related web page of Colnect.

spot	own	catalog	subject	description
1.1	✓	1474	Stamp Collecting	8c (nov 1972) comm., multicolor
2.1	✓	1468	Mail Order	8c (sep 1972) comm., multicolor
2.2	✓	1463	P.T.A.	8c (sep 1972) comm., black & yellow
2.3	✓	1473	Pharmacy	8c (nov 1972) comm., multicolor
3.1	✓	1464	Northern Fur Seal Callorhinus ursinus	8c (sep 1972) comm., multicolor
3.2	✓	1465	Northern Cardinal Cardinalis cardinalis	8c (sep 1972) comm., multicolor
4.1	✓	1466	Brown Pelican Pelecanus occidentalis	8c (sep 1972) comm., multicolor
4.2	✓	1467	Bighorn Sheep Ovis canadensis	8c (sep 1972) comm., multicolor
5.1	✓	1470	Tom Sawyer Norman Rockwell	8c (oct 1972) comm., multicolor

Christmas & Holidays

5.2	✓	1471	Master of St. Lucy Legend St. James Church, Bruges	8c (nov 1972) comm., multicolor
5.3	✓	1472	Santa Claus	8c (nov 1972) comm., multicolor

Footnotes

Spot refers to the postion of the stamp on the album page (e.g., 3.2 indicates row 3, position 2).
Amt. is an abbreviation for the face amount of the stamp.
Own indicates the stamp status: ✓ for unused; ✗ for used or canceled; ⭑ signifies I ordered one; ; ✨ indicates it was bought recently; ✠ means an auction bid is pending; and ◎ is used, and it costs too much for unused.
To search by catalog number, go to the search box and enter it in the catalog number box. However, it’s a bit broken; I need to fix it.