Common cormorant

The Great Cormorant is a large black bird, but there is a wide variation in size in the species wide range. Weight is reported from 1.5 kg . Length can vary from 70 to 102 cm and wingspan from 121 to 160 cm . It has a longish tail and yellow throat-patch. Adults have white thigh patches in the breeding season. In European waters it can be distinguished from the Common Shag by its larger size, heavier build, thicker bill, lack of a crest and plumage without any green tinge.

The Common cormorant is classified as Least Concern. Does not qualify for a more at risk category. Widespread and abundant taxa are included in this category.

Strange Wetlands: The Common Cormorant, or Shag, is a Management Quagmire - Posted By Leah Stetson | September 4, 2009 Strange WetlandsStrange Wetlands: The Common Cormorant, or Shag, is a Management Quagmire = As a little girl, one of my favorite books was a collection of nonsense poetry. I think it rubbed off on my own lyrical taste for funny rhymes. More

common cormorants (Phalacrocorax carbo) from Lake Biwa in Japan accumulated high levels of DRCs (360 More

The common cormorant or shag is a poem my brother and I were taught as children in the early 1950s. Though the words were slightly different the whole concept was the same. More

The Common Cormorant walks in a waddling and awkward manner, but at a good pace, and leaps from one stone to another, assisting itself with its wings, and occasionally with the tail, which acts as a kind of spring. More

Aspects of the topic common cormorant are discussed in the following places at Britannica. Assorted References * description (in cormorant (bird)) Cormorants have a long hook-tipped bill, patches of bare skin on the face, and a small gular sac (throat pouch). More

The common Cormorant (Phalacrocorax cabro) is a sea bird. It is related to gulls and fulmars but most closely to pelicans, and it is often confused with the Shag. The cormorant is well known for its habit of hanging out its wings to dry. This is because its plumage is not particularly waterproof, as it lacks the necessary preen gland that most birds have. Cormorants eat fish and also hunt inland, where they have been known to catch frogs and other amphibians. More

The common cormorant P carbo is black, glossed with bronze; it feed voraciously, and in the East is trained to fish for its owner, a cord round the neck preventing it swallowing the catch. The very similar shag P graculus is glossed with green. The cormorant birds are then sent out into the water to catch the fish. More

Picture of Phalacrocorax carbo above has been licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial.
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Order : Pelecaniformes
Family : Phalacrocoracidae
Genus : Phalacrocorax
Species : carbo
Authority : (Linnaeus, 1758)