CORMORANT 359 



Though the observations are doubtlessly correct, it is doubtful whether 

 an actual co-operative hunt takes place ; perhaps an unusual number 

 of birds, in such cases, had been attracted by shoals of fish in shallow 

 places, where the cormorants could dive to the ground. On the other 

 hand, it has been asserted by several good observers that pelicans act 

 in a similar way. 



Nidification commences early in April, and the nests are placed 

 close together on trees, rocks, bushes, or reeds, according to the 

 opportunities offered by the locality. (See " Classified Notes.") They 

 consist of sticks, reeds, grass, seaweed, and other material, and are 

 generally saturated with the birds' excrement ; they vary in size, old 

 nests being used year after year, and becoming very bulky in time. 

 As a rule cormorants nest in colonies, sometimes small, sometimes of 

 hundreds and even thousands of pairs; but I have found in East 

 Prussia, on a tree on a little island in the Mauersee, a single nest, 

 several miles from a colony. The stench in a cormorant's rookery is 

 very strong, and much worse than in any heronry ; in fact, on some 

 of the oceanic islands, where other species of cormorants breed in 

 enormous numbers, it is so overpowering that it makes even sailors, 

 accustomed to smells and hardships, sick in an instant. The cor- 

 morant itself has a strong odour at all times of the year, different 

 from that of all other strong-smelling birds, such as Petrels for 

 example. A drawer of cormorant-skins in a museum, when opened, 

 lets the odour all over a large room. 



Both parents brood, and incubation lasts four weeks. When the 

 young are hatched naked, slate-coloured, blind, helpless, and very 

 ugly little creatures the extraordinary feeding commences, for 

 cormorants are fed in a very peculiar and, what may appear to us, 

 repulsive way. The parent birds both parents seem to feed opens 

 its beak wide, and the baby puts its head and neck deep into the 

 throat of its parent, extracting partly digested fish from the crop. 

 This proceeding looks grotesque, and it appears as if the old bird 

 were swallowing its children. The young keep up an unpleasant 



