Cormorants are large, black waterbirds. They feed on fish, which they catch with their long, hook-tipped bills while swimming underwater. Cormorants nest on low cliffs around the coasts, or in colonies in trees on lakes and flooded gravel pits. Cormorants can often be spotted perched on a rock or bank with their wings held out. In this stance, they are able to dry their feathers off which are not waterproof.
How to identify
The cormorant is a large, shiny black bird, with a white patch on the thigh during the summer breeding season. Young birds are dark brown above and white below.
Did you know?
There are two subspecies of cormorant in the UK. There's the mostly coastal nesting Phalacrocorax carbo carbo, and there's Phalacrocorax carbo sinensis, which arrived from continental Europe and has led the increase of inland cormorant nesting colonies.
