Last modified: 2023-07-03 by
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![[Vilémov municipality flag]](../images/c/cz-oc-vi.gif)
by Blas Delgado Ortiz, 5 May 2002At first appearance it looks like a pelican, but there are only 8 known species and none has that peak. I know this is a waterfowl bird, but don't remember its name.
Blas Delgado Ortiz, 5 May 2002
It is an evident *heraldic* pelican, not completely similar to any living species. However, there are no red-white checkered
eagles in Moravia and no two-tailed lions in Bohemia ... :-)
Jan Zrzavy, 6 May 2002
Pelican is right. Blas is simply impeded by the knowledge of what a pelican actually looks like. Any time you see a bird in this posture (tearing its own breast to feed its young), it's a pelican. But a heraldic pelican, not a natural one, since natural pelicans don't indulge in this kind of masochistic obsession with doing anything and everything for one's offspring. A real pelican's beak, of course, could not remotely tear the bird's own flesh, which is why many old-time heraldists (having little information about the actual bird) portrayed it with something more like a vulture's beak. Vilémov's is closer to reality than many.
Joe McMillan, 6 May 2002