FAY

This is FAY, a Cormorant from a brood of four ringed in Forvie, North-east Scotland. I found it on St Mary's, Isles of Scilly on 31st October 2007. It's still the most southerly recovery from all the Cormorants ringed on the east coast of Scotland to date.

Coincidentally, I also found another colour-ringed Cormorant from the same area at the weekend. This one was on Brogborough lake in Beds. It was originally ringed in Inverbervie on 25th July earlier this year.

Reporting colour-ringed birds can be very rewarding....if the ringers involved can be bothered to write back! Which isn't always the case, unfortunately.

(edited to keep Errol happy!)

More thoughts on Laurel and Hardy...

In the quiet summer period I've been looking at Cormorants again. The more I look at, the more interesting I'm finding them. The gular angle seems to be the key to identifying them racially, with almost all of the other features being variable. The two birds in the first two images below are siniensis at the back and carbo at the front. The gular angle makes this obvious, however the structure of these birds isn't such a big help as they should, in theory, be the other way around!

Structurally, the carbo should be the thicker-set bird, with the flatter crown. and more stocky bill. However this is presumably a male siniensis, and a female carbo, making looking solely at structure, in this case, not useful.



I've moved the heads of these birds in Photoshop so the gular angle is more obvious. (Castle Mills GP, Beds, 24th July 2009)

The birds below are carbo on the left, and siniensis on the right. Both are immatures and their white underparts are noticably different, with the gleaming white belly of the siniensis bird really obvious. (Marston Vale CP, Beds, 1st August 2009)

A bit more on this pair can be found here.

Laurel and Hardy

Good job no one reads this stuff! My idea about identifying carbo Cormorants goes completely out the window after a good read. However, I managed to photograph most of the Cormorants on the raft that day and what do you know, I've got them both in the same shot:

So Stan (the skinny one, siniensis) is on the right, and Oliver (the fat one, carbo) is on the left. Note the thicker set head of Oliver, with a more angular gular, and white face patch being nice and wide at the bottom. There, told you it was easy...