32 THE COMMON CORMORANT. 



the 7th of May 1610, the king was at Thetford, in Norfolk, 

 hunting, hawking, and fishing with Cormorants ; also that 

 James had a regular establishment for his Cormorants on 

 the river at Westminster, and created a new office, " Master 

 of the Eoyal Cormorants." 1 



The voracity of this bird is proverbial. A specimen 

 obtained near Paxton in January 1877 had in its stomach 

 a bull trout (Salmo eriox) seventeen inches in length, along 

 with the remains of other fish. 2 It occasionally comes up 

 the Tweed from the sea in the winter and spring months, 

 an example in immature plumage having been shot while 

 sitting on the top of a tall tree by the side of the river at 

 Paxton in the winter of 1871. The Eev. Thomas Mills, 

 who wrote the report on the parish of Ladykirk in the Old 

 Statistical Account of Scotland, 1793, mentions that "Goos- 

 anders, Wigeons, and Cormorants resort to the Tweed in 

 severe winters, and sometimes Grebes and Speckled Divers." 3 

 It has apparently given its name to Scart Heugh on the 

 Tweed, near the Old Camp at Milne Graden. 



There is no difference in the colour of the plumage of 

 the adult male and female. In their nuptial dress they 

 have a large white patch on each thigh. The tail consists 

 of fourteen feathers. 



1 The Ornithology of Shakespeare, by J. E. Harting, 1871, pp. 261, 262. 

 3 Hist. Ber. Nat. Club, vol. viii. p. 184. 



3 The Statistical Account of Scotland, by Sir John Sinclair, Bart., 1793, vol. viii. 

 p. 74. 



