These birds are dark in colour with a white stripe from the top of the bill up to the crown and down the sides of the neck.

[2][3] Compared to the brown pelican, it also has proportionally longer crest feathers, as well as differences in the colours of the gular pouch, beak, scapulars and greater wing coverts.

[5][6] On occasion they may take other food items, such as nestling of imperial shags, young Peruvian diving petrels, gray gulls and cannibalize unrelated chicks of their own species.

[6] In fact, those in the northern Humboldt Current System feed almost exclusively on one species, the Peruvian anchoveta.

[11] One factor affecting their status may be competition with fishing industries for anchovies, a primary food source for the species.