CORMORANT. 



found standing or nestling on trees; but as a sea-bird, 

 its place of repose and nestling is the rocks. 



This is a large bird: three feet in length, nearly 

 five feet in the extent of the wings, and weighing as 

 much as seven pounds ; but this must be considered 

 as the dimensions of a lartre specimen, and the sizes 

 are apt to vary. Length of the bill about five inches, 

 and of a dusky colour for the greater part of its length, 

 but with the cere yellow ; tarsi, toes, and webs sooty 

 black ; irides bright green. The plumage varies a 

 little with the season. General colour, greenish black, 

 with black margins to the feathers on the back, and 

 a line of ash colour on the scapulars. In the breeding 

 season, the neck and thighs are mottled with small 

 white feathers, and there is a crest of long green 

 feathers on the back of the head. In winter these 

 feathers fall oft', and the general tint of the upper part 

 becomes rusty. There is also a white gorget on the 

 neck, which becomes much duller in the colour during 

 winter. 



Though these birds are generally found in remote 

 and inaccessible places for their nests, such as high 

 trees and detached rocks, they are social with each 

 other, and many nests are often found in the near 

 vicinity of each other. The eggs are three or four in 

 number, of about two ounces in weight, greenish white, 

 and with the surface of the shell rather rough. 



Though cormorants are industrious and successful 

 fishers, and as such thin the waters of their finny in- 

 habitants to a considerable extent, yet they pursue 

 their fishing with peace and good order, and never 

 interfere with or annoy any other birds. It can be 

 tamed very readily ; and a detailed account of one in 

 a domesticated state may be found in Montagu's 

 Ornithological Dictionary. 



The common cormorant extends to the very coldest 

 parts of the northern hemisphere, being found in 

 Greenland. Wherever, indeed, there is an open sea, 

 and high rocks to afford the resting place which the 

 birds most affect, there is never any want of cormo- 

 rants, though in such places they are forced to shift 

 their quarters with the season. They are driven 

 not merely by being frozen out, but by the unusual 

 departure from the coast of those fish on which they 

 feed ; so that, if the movements of cormorants and 

 other fishing birds were properly attended to.it would 

 throw very considerable light, not only on the natural 

 history of the inhabitants of the waters, but on the 

 seasons at which fishing for the different kinds of the 

 finny race can be carried on with the greatest success, 

 and where every species should be sought for, when 

 it disappears from any particular spot. All oviparous 

 fishes, and they comprise the kinds which are most 

 valuable to man as food, spawn on the banks or 

 shores, or in the estuaries of rivers ; and the young 

 remain for a considerable time near the shore before 

 they betake themselves to the deep water. Much of 

 the spawn is detached and brought to the surface, or 

 washed to the water line on the shore, where it forms 

 a very considerable part of the food of terns and other 

 skimming birds, and also of those birds which pick up 

 their food, by running along the sands. Therefore, 

 we find these birds on the shore, and in the full ac- 

 tivity of breeding and nest building where the spawn 

 is deposited. Cormorants and other fishing birds come 

 later, after the fry have attained a considerable size, 

 and their breeding time comes on when the numbers 

 and size of the young fish on the coast are a maxi- 

 mum as taken together. When the spawn is gone, 



and the young fishes have attained considerable size, 

 the skimrning birds which, by this time, have reared 

 their broods, find it necessary to disperse themselves 

 over the ocean. The fishing birds, properly so 

 called, have then the shores in a great measure to 

 themselves, arid, as the weather suits, they may be 

 seen driving about with great activity. But their 

 time for dispersing comes in the end, and they scatter 

 more widely along the shores than the skimmers, as 

 they are larger birds, and individually consume more 

 food ; and it is on such occasions as this that the 

 cormorants, which are perhaps the most voracious of 

 the whole, betake themselves to the fresh waters, 

 though, where these waters are large, and abound 

 with fish, cormorants sometimes choose their breeding 

 places on the trees near such waters, in the manner 

 that has been described already. When they nestle 

 on the rocks, or even when on trees, they do not, as 

 is the case with many other birds, return to the same 

 rocks, but shift about from one to another. 



When they are not employed in fishing, and espe- 

 cially when they have fished to the full expansion of 

 their wide and swelling stomachs, they sit down in a 

 state of very dismal repose, and at other times they 

 may be seen by dozens together, drying themselves 

 on the rocks, with their wings spread out as flat and 

 as motionless as if they were dead carcases which had 

 been placed there by human art. 



As food, the cormorant, though a large bird, is of 

 little or no value ; the smell of it is very rank and 

 offensive, and the flesh, dressed in any of the common 

 ways, would suffice to turn the stomach of a Green- 

 lander or an Esquimaux. But, in some of the northern 

 islands, the young are eaten, and even relished as a 

 sort of dainty, after having been buried for twenty- 

 four hours in the earth, which is said to remove the 

 bad flavour of the flesh, and also to make it tender. 

 Soup made of them in this manner is said to taste 

 soniel/ting like hare-soup ; but we should be a little 

 sceptical of the fact, though good soup may be made 

 with ant/ thing in it as one ingredient, which is not of 

 so positively offensive a nature as to spoil the rest. 



When regal amusements consisted more of field 

 sports than they do in these days, there was an office 

 of the royal household of England, known by the 

 style and title of " Master of the King's Cormorant.*;.'' 

 Whether such an office may not still exist, and be 

 exercised under another name, is not a point which 

 writers on natural history are called upon to settle ; 

 but it is certain that, in those comparatively rude and 

 primitive times, cormorants were trained to catch 

 fish, and prevented from swallowing what they did 

 catch by a tight collar of leather put round the neck. 

 They were not difficult to train, were expert in then 

 labour, and docile and easily managed. 



P. graculiis (ihc Shag, smaller cormorant, or smaller 

 sea-crow). This species is much smaller than the 

 former, and it is also more lightly made, and more 

 active, found at more places of the coast, and more 

 constantly there. The action of the shag upon the 

 water, on a fine breezy day, when the smaller fishes 

 are near the surface, is very amusing, and even 

 graceful. It floats with wonderful buoyancy in the 

 air, twitches down to the water with the rapidity of 

 lightning, and sometimes passes clean through the 

 unbroken surge, and appears upon the wing on the 

 other side. 



The shag is subject to considerable varieties in 

 size ; and, as the young are without the crest, and 



