UPDATES: Bandon Inundated by Thousands of Pelicans Migrating South Along Oregon Coast

Updated 11/15/2026 at 10:58 a.m.
By Oregon Coast Beach Connection Staff

(Bandon, Oregon) – UPDATE: as of dawn Sunday they appear to be gone. Rest of story with some new updates:

It's as if Hitchcock had a cute little baby. Bandon and a few other parts of the south Oregon coast are literally getting invaded by hordes of California brown pelicans (Pelecanus occidentalis californicus), and that means by the thousands. Photo Manuela Durson - Manuela Durson Fine Arts

Photos of Bandon's docks show the waterfront structures completely covered in what is mostly known as brown pelicans. Social media has lit up with photos and video of them, including not just the docks but the large seastacks at Bandon's oceanfront. Those are covered with them too.

There are some reports of them at Coos Bay as well, but the numbers seem to be – at least for now – concentrated in Bandon. Why You Should Not Feed Birds on Coast

No one in the area has seen anything like it, and some who report that sentiment have been there for decades.

UPDATES:

Jim Proehl of the Bandon History Museum said they appear to be gone as of dawn Sunday morning. He only counted three on the docks this morning.

“Maybe they will come back in as the day goes on. Maybe they have moved on,” he told Oregon Coast Beach Connection. “The pelicans are selective about which docks they inhabit. They took over the crabbing docks, but ignore the boat basin docks.”

He also noted they're much better-tempered than the sea lions, calling them “civil.” They made space when more of their own arrived, and didn't try to push each other off.

“They are quiet,” he added.

Local photog Manuela Durson snapped a few shots in a state of awe.

“My husband says they were about 1000 or so pelicans, it seemed a bit more to me, but of course hard to tell,” she told Oregon Coast Beach Connection. “And yes, they were covering all the dock surfaces, so much so that the city of Bandon actually put cones in front of the boat entrance and the dock entrance so that no boats and people would disturb them. “

Photo Manuela Durson - Manuela Durson Fine Arts

All this comes amid extremely heavy winds and waters in the region over the last week or so. It seems they just popped up sometime starting about November 12 or so.

Pacific Northwest Weather | Oregon, Washington, Coastline (see NW from space) |---| Washington Coast Weather |---| Oregon Coast Weather |---| Inland Oregon Weather

Indeed, Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife (ODFW) touted the sight of brown pelicans in October, saying they were migrating through the area. They mentioned mostly Lincoln County and Lane County as places to catch them, but this time it seems they've darted inland to the south coast for their vacation time.

There's no firm reason known as yet why so many have showed up, but experts in the region think it's likely the 75-mph winds and rough waves have something to do with it.

“Sometimes, large flocks gather during migration,” said ODFW on its site. “It is rarely seen far inland or beyond the edge of the continental shelf.”

The brown pelicans have had a little bit of a dramatic history here. Back in January of 2010, there were an alarming number of them emaciated and either dead or dying. The Whale Watching Center in Depoe Bay had copious photographs of them in the area, and reports were aplenty of dead ones on the beaches.

They had taken to begging for food scraps from humans back then, which experts say is a really bad idea. There are some on social bragging about feeding these flocks with scraps of bread and such. This does them much more harm than good, as their bodies can only properly process fish. Like seagulls, feeding human foods to these birds causes them a kind of malnutrition, not to mention gets them too comfortable around humans. Why You Should Not Feed Birds on Coast

 

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