LARGE BLACK CORMORANT 135 
LARGE BLACK CORMORANT 
Phalacrocorax carbo novce-hollandice 
There need be no difficulty in distinguishing this 
bird from the other three species of Cormorants 
found about Geelong, for two of them are black 
and white, and the third, though black, is much 
smaller than this one. Wherever there is enough 
fish to satisfy his hunger, one may expect to find the 
Large Black Cormorant, and he has a correspondingly 
wide distribution in our district. I should say that 
the old wrecked piers at Point Henry are among his 
most favoured resorts, but he is found all round Corio 
Bay, on the Connewarre Lakes, where he is particularly 
plentiful, Barwon and Moorabool Rivers, and on fresh- 
water areas of any extent, as Lake Modewarre. He 
occurs also all along the south coast, where reefs and 
rocky headlands exist, from Point Lonsdale to Lorne 
and beyond. 
On the sea-coast he is wont to gather into small 
flocks — I have rarely seen more than twenty birds 
together — but along the rivers it is usually a solitary 
bird that one sees perched high on some dead gum 
or like point of vantage. And, at all events on the 
lakes and coast, the Black Cormorants rarely roost 
in the vicinity of the place where they have been 
fishing during the day. From Connewarre, for 
instance, though the other Cormorants remain all 
night about the lake, the Large Black birds, about 
