NPS/Intern Tristan Thomas Double-crested Cormorant (Phalacrocorax auritus)• Double-crested Cormorants make bulky nests full of sticks and a variety of other materials. • They like to pick up lots of junk to build their nests including: rope, deflated balloons, fishnets, and plastic debris. Sometimes they even pick up parts of dead birds.• Sometimes large pebbles are found in cormorant nests and the cormorants think they are eggs and take care of them. • Their diet is almost all fish with some insects, crustaceans, or amphibians mixed in. • Cormorants have less preen oil than other birds which means when they’re in the water their feathers get soaked instead of shedding water like a ducks feathers. This sounds like it would be troubling for the cormorant but instead it allows them to hunt underwater more effectively. Identification Information• Size: Between a crow and a goose (Medium/Large)• Color: Adult Double-crested Cormorants are brown on their back feathers but black on their belly feathers. They have a small patch of yellow/orange skin on their face. During breeding season the adults develop a small double crest on their face of black or white feathers.
All of the above information is an abbreviated version of information gathered from the Cornell Lab of Ornithology. Please visit their website for more in-depth bird information.
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Last updated: August 27, 2019