 In medieval Europe , the pelican was thought to be particularly attentive to her young , to the point of providing her own blood by wounding her own breast when no other food was available . As a result , the pelican came to symbolise the Passion of Jesus and the Eucharist , and usurped the image of the lamb and the flag . A reference to this mythical characteristic is contained for example in the hymn by Saint Thomas Aquinas , " <unk> te devote " or " <unk> We Adore Thee " , where in the penultimate verse he describes Christ as the " loving divine pelican , able to provide nourishment from his breast " . Elizabeth I of England adopted the symbol , portraying herself as the " mother of the Church of England " . Nicholas Hilliard painted the Pelican Portrait in around 1573 , now owned by the Walker Art Gallery in Liverpool . A pelican feeding her young is depicted in an oval panel at the bottom of the title page of the first ( 1611 ) edition of the King James Bible . Such " a pelican in her piety " appears in the 1686 reredos by Grinling Gibbons in the church of St Mary <unk> in the City of London . Earlier medieval examples of the motif appear in painted murals , for example that of c . 1350 in the parish church of <unk> Walter , Essex . 
