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Concept
Cormorant
Summary
Phalacrocoracidae is a family of approximately 40 species of aquatic birds commonly known as cormorants and shags. Several different classifications of the family have been proposed, but in 2021 the International Ornithologists' Union (IOU) adopted a consensus taxonomy of seven genera. The great cormorant (Phalacrocorax carbo) and the common shag (Gulosus aristotelis) are the only two species of the family commonly encountered in Britain and Ireland and "cormorant" and "shag" appellations have been later assigned to different species in the family somewhat haphazardly.
Cormorants and shags are medium-to-large birds, with body weight in the range of and wing span of . The majority of species have dark feathers. The bill is long, thin and hooked. Their feet have webbing between all four toes. All species are fish-eaters, catching the prey by diving from the surface. They are excellent divers, and under water they propel themselves with their feet with help from their wings; some cormorant species have been found to dive as deep as . They have relatively short wings due to their need for economical movement underwater, and consequently have among the highest flight costs of any flying bird.
Cormorants nest in colonies around the shore, on trees, islets or cliffs. They are coastal rather than oceanic birds, and some have colonised inland waters. The original ancestor of cormorants seems to have been a fresh-water bird. They range around the world, except for the central Pacific islands.
"Cormorant" is a contraction derived either directly from Latin corvus marinus, "sea raven", or through Brythonic Celtic. Cormoran is the Cornish name of the sea giant in the tale of Jack the Giant Killer. Indeed, "sea raven" or analogous terms were the usual terms for cormorants in Germanic languages until after the Middle Ages. The French explorer André Thévet commented in 1558: "the beak [is] similar to that of a cormorant or other corvid", which demonstrates that the erroneous belief that the birds were related to ravens lasted at least to the 16th century.
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