CORMORANT. 655 



1880), informs me that a pair of Cormorants bred on the branch of a tree 

 overhanging one of their ponds. The habits of birds in confinement are 

 not always a true gnide to those of the species in a wild state ; but if it be 

 safe to generalize from two such entirely independent series of facts, the 

 following important conclusions arc arrived at. The Cormorant begins to 

 lay late in March or early in April ; both parents take their turn in the 

 duties of incubation, which lasts about twenty-eight days ; the task of 

 sitting on the nest to keep the newly hatched young warm devolves upon 

 the female, whilst that of feeding the family is undertaken by the male, 

 who disgorges his partly digested food and allows the young to feed out of 

 his mouth. 



The Cormorant is intermediate in size between a Duck and a Goose. 

 There is no difterence in the colour of the plumage of the adult male and 

 female, but the latter is slightly smaller. After the autumn moult it 

 is a very handsome bird, the prevailing colour of the plumage being 

 black, richly glossed with metallic purple and green; the wing-coverts, 

 scapulars, and feathers of the upper back are bronzy brown with 

 blackish-grcen margins ; a white gorget extends across the upper 

 throat and on the sides of the head; the quills and tail-feathers are 

 black, slightly glossed with green. Bare part of the face and throat yellow ; 

 bill black above, shading into grey on the sides and yellow at the base ; legs 

 and feet black ; irides emerald-green. In nuptial dress the head and neck 

 are thickly sprinkled over with long, slender, white filaments, whilst on 

 each thigh is a large white patch of silky plumes. Young in first plumage 

 have the general colour of the upper parts brow^i, shading into dirty white 

 on the underparts ; the feathers of the upper parts have dark margins and 

 a slight gloss of green, which is also perceptible on the head and hind 

 neck. After the first autumn moult, when the bird is rather more than a 

 year old, an intermediate plumage is assumed, having much more metallic 

 gloss on the upper parts and much less white on the underparts than in 

 first plumage. Young in down are a nearly uniform sooty blacky with a 

 flesh-coloured bill and dark brown feet with pale brown webs *. 



* Dresser, in his ' Birds of Europe,' has made a curious muddle of the seasonal changes 

 of plumage of the Cormorant, in consequence of his ignorance respecting the moulting of 

 birds, a subject which he persistently ignores throughout his work. He appears to be 

 unacquainted with the facts that the Cormorant only moults once in the year, in autumn, 

 when it acquires its winter plumage, that in this dress both the white filaments on the 

 head and neck and the white plumes on the thighs are absent, that these nuptial adorn- 

 ments are acquired in very early spring in time for the pairing-season (say in February), 

 and th.at in May, when incubation commences, they are cast, leaving the abraded summer 

 plumage similar to that of early winter. The adult in full summer dress figured by Dresser 

 has cast the white filaments on the head and neck, but still retains the white plumes on 

 the thighs ; what he calls his adult in winter plumage is a bird in full nuptial dress. 



