84 THE BIRDS OF DEVONSHIRE. 



Oeder STEGANOPODES. 



Family Pelecanid^. 

 GOmHO'RK^T.—Phalacrocorax car bo (Linu). 



An abundant species on our coasts. The Rev. M. 

 A. Matliew reports the Cormorant as breeding on 

 the coasts of both North and South Devon. Mr. P. 

 Pershouse kindly contributes information as to its 

 breeding near Torquay, and Mr. Rawson adds that 

 a few pairs also breed on Lundy Island. Mr. Mitchell 

 writes : "I saw three nests close together in the 

 cliffs of Rame Head, near Plymouth, this Spring. 

 When I looked over the cliff, the birds were sitting; 

 they would not leave their nests, even when I threw 

 stones at them, but they kept 'snapping' towards 

 me with their beaks, and stretching out their necks. 

 A bird was shot on Dartmoor lately, at Tavy Cleave 

 twenty-three miles from the sea." 



Baron A. von Hiigel measured a Conger eel of 

 thirty inches, taken entire from the gullet of a 

 Cormorant shot in Torbay. Gatcombe often 

 recorded the Cormorants, which he watched at 

 Plymouth, as catching Congers, sometimes under 

 circumstances of considerable difficulty, as when a 

 large eel had twisted itself so tightly around the 

 neck of its captor as to almost cause suffocation. 

 Once, when visiting the Tamar river, he was "much 

 interested in watching the struggles of a Cormorant 

 with a large fish on a mud-flat near the river, which 

 it must just have caught, or possibly found left dry 



