220 BRITISH BIRDS 



a dirty yellowish colour. The young birds are hatched blind, and 

 have a naked, bluish black skin, but they soon grow a thick, sooty 

 black down. They are at all stages strange and repulsive-looking 

 creatures, and when handled or approached by a person they become 

 sick with fear or anger, and roll and sprawl about on their nests, 

 screaming harshly, and vomiting their half-digested food. 



The young are fed with fish that has already been partially di- 

 gested in the maw of the parent. It is not disgorged ; the young bird 

 thrusts his head and neck deep down into his parent's gullet, and 

 feeds as a horse does from his nose -bag. 



The young are said not to assume the adult or breeding plumage 

 until the third year. 



Shag, or Green Cormorant. 

 Phalacrocorax graculus. 



Bill black ; base of the under mandible yellow, the black 

 skin about the gape thickly studded with small yellow spots ; iris 

 emerald-green ; crown, neck, upper and under parts dark green 

 with purple and bronze reflections ; wing and tail-feathers, legs and 

 feet, black ; a crest, curling forwards, grows on the forehead in early 

 spring, and is lost by the end of May. Length, twenty-seven 

 inches. 



The shag may be easily mistaken for the cormorant, which it 

 closely resembles, but when near at hand is seen to differ in its 

 smaller size and its prevailing green colour, which appears black at 

 a distance ; and, in the breeding season, by the absence of the white 

 patch on the flank. In its habits it is more strictly marine than 

 the cormorant, but resembles that bird in its manner of swimming 

 and flight. It prefers bays and inlets to the open sea, and deep 

 water near rocks to the shallow sea, where there is a low beach. 

 In diving after fish it springs upwards almost out of the water, and 

 goes down head first. Beneath the water it propels itself wholly by its 

 feet ; the auks, and some other diving birds, use their wings as fins 

 to assist progression. After capturing a fish the shag brings it to 

 the surface to swallow it, then swims on for a space, and dives again, 

 and so on, and finally returns to the rock, where it proceeds to dis- 

 gorge its prey, to devour it at leisure. The shag breeds on sea- 

 cliffs, sometimes building on the ledges or in crevices, but caves, 



