136 BIRDS OF THE DISTRICT OF GEELONG 
an hour before sunset, fly north-westwards, probably 
to Point Henry, for the night. At Torquay you may 
watch them, flying close to the waves, in the early 
morning, as they leave the high cliff-ledges where 
they have passed the night, to fish on the flat reefs 
five miles or more away ; and in the evening they 
return by the same route. 
I find that this species does not mix much with 
any other. Of 559 Cormorants which in half an hour 
I counted flying from the Bay to the old pond in the 
Gardens on the evening of May ist, 1902, not one 
was a Large Black ; and among a thousand odd at 
Point Henry, on August 24th, 191 2, there were but 
half a dozen of this species. Conversely, it has the 
ocean reefs practically to itself ; one rarely notes any 
of the other Cormorants there. 
Gluttonous and destructive as he is — who has not 
watched a Cormorant dive and swallow, dive and 
swallow, till it seemed a special provision of nature 
that he did not burst ? — the Cormorant is still a fine 
creature with his glossy coat of greenish black. There 
is something of the nobility of a bird of prey about 
him, and he is quite as hard to approach as is the 
wariest of the Falconidae. Nor is he unmitigated 
greed. During a battue on Lake Wendouree, a 
Cormorant was seen to carry a fish to a wounded 
mate in a tree. 
I am inclined to think that this species nests in 
crannies of the high cliffs between Torquay and 
Airey's Inlet. The birds are there at all seasons of 
