Pelagic Cormorant

Phalacrocorax pelagicus

Order PELECANIFORMES - Family PHALACROCORACIDAE

Menu

1. Cool Facts
2. Description
3. Similar Species
4. Sound
5. Range
6. Habitat
7. Food
8. Behavior
9. Reproduction
10. Conservation Status
11. Other Names

The Pelagic Cormorant is a small, slender cormorant of the Pacific Coast. Although it is exclusively marine in habits, its name is misleading, since it prefers inshore areas rather than the open ocean.

Cool Facts

• The Pelagic Cormorant uses its own guano to solidify its nest materials and to cement its nest to the cliff face.
• The Pelagic Cormorant is among the least gregarious or social of the cormorants, nesting on steep cliffs along rocky and exposed shorelines, either in loose colonies or far from nearest neighbors.

Description

• Size: 51-76 cm (20-30 in)
• Wingspan: 100-121 cm (39-48 in)
• Weight: 1370-2440 g (48.36-86.13 ounces)

• Large, dark water bird; small to medium-sized cormorant.
• Long body and long, slender neck.
• Slender bill is blunt or hooked at tip.

• Relatively long tail.
• Plumage black glossed greenish and violet-bronze on body and violet-purple on neck.
• In breeding plumage has white patches on flanks.
• Facial skin red during breeding; black in nonbreeding season.
• Double crest on head during breeding.
• Bill blackish brown, with orange to reddish at base.
• Eyes yellow-green to deep sea green.
• Legs and feet black.

Sex Differences

Sexes look alike; males slightly larger.

Immature

Immature brownish and lacks crests or glossy plumage of adult.

Similar Species

• Double-crested Cormorant is larger, with a thicker bill, and has conspicuous pale facial skin, usually orange. Juvenile has uniformly pale upper breast.
• Brandt's Cormorant is larger and stockier, with shorter tail, larger bill, blue or gray facial skin, and a pale patch at the base of the bill. Juvenile has pale breast with V-shaped pale mark.
• Red-faced Cormorant very similar, but has larger, slightly yellowish bill and bare skin reaching above the bill. Immature nearly identical to immature Pelagic Cormorant except for thicker, paler bill.

Sound

Low groans, croaks, or hisses.

Range

Summer Range

Coastal areas from northern Alaska southward to northern Baja California. Also from Asian Arctic to Japan.

Winter Range

Winters from Pribilofs and Aleutian Islands southward to Baja California. Also southward along Asian coast to Hong Kong.

Habitat

Found in inshore coastal waters. Breeding and roost sites include rocky habitat along outer coast, bays, inlets, estuaries, rapids, coves, surge narrows, harbors, lagoons, and coastal log-storage sites.

Food

Fish and marine invertebrates.

Behavior

Foraging

Dives from the surface of the water and chases prey under water. Grabs fish in bill, without spearing it.

Reproduction

Nest Type

Compact shallow bowl of mostly grass and seaweeds, but also mosses, sticks, feathers and general marine debris (including rope, plastic, and other human-made objects); lined with dry vegetation. Placed on narrow ledges on high, steep, inaccessible rocky cliffs, facing the sea.

Egg Description

Greenish white to bluish.

Clutch Size

Usually 2-4 eggs. Range: 1-8.

Condition at Hatching

Naked and helpless.

Conservation Status

Populations appear stable. Numbers were reduced by human and natural disturbances from 1850 to 1900s.

Other Names

Cormoran Pélagique (French)
Cormorán Pelágico, Pato sargento (Spanish)
Baird's Cormorant (English)

Sources used to construct this page:

Hobson, K. A. 1997. Pelagic Cormorant (Phalacrocorax pelagicus). In The Birds of North America, No. 282 (A. Poole and F. Gill, eds.). The Academy of Natural Sciences, Philadelphia, PA, and The American Ornithologists' Union, Washington, D.C.