Bird, bug, butterfly and a wild variety of photos from Belarus, Cyprus, Finland, Greece, Ireland, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Scotland and Spain by Irish wildlife photographer Patrick J. O'Keeffe and invited guests

Saturday 1 January 2022

CONTINENTAL CORMORANT (Phalacrocorax carbo subspecies P. c. sinensis) immature on 1st January 2022 at Swords Sailing Club, Broadmeadow Estuary, Malahide, Fingal, Co. Dublin, Ireland


  
CLICK ON PHOTO TO SEE HIGHER QUALITY IMAGE
Click external link here for detailed species information
 Click external link here to see distribution map and to hear calls
 
The Great Cormorant (Phalacrocorax carbo) is of the family Phalacrocoracidae which is in the genus Phalacrocorax. It has a scattered distribution in parts of North America, Eurasia, Africa and Australasia. 
There are a number subspecies recognised including the ground nesting Common Cormorant (Phalacrocorax carbo carbo) which occurs in Britain and Ireland that breeds on coastal rocky outcrops and on off shore islands.  The tree nesting Continental Cormorant (Phalacrocorax carbo sinensis) which breeds in Northern Europe extending eastwards to Japan, but has in recent times colonised parts of southern Britain. This is apparently a rare subspecies in Ireland with less than 70 records but is in all probability under recorded.
 
There are three previous Continental Cormorant (P. c. sinensis) records from Co. Dublin: 
      1. Broadmeadow Estuary, Swords, 1st winter from 4th to 30th January 2013. 
      2. Broadmeadow Estuary, Swords, 1st winter from 28th January to 16th May 2013, different from above. 
      3. Scotsman Bay, Dunlaoire, adult on 1st February 2014.
 
 Patrick J. O'Keeffe / Raw Birds
 
Reference:
A List of Some Rarer Birds in Dublin version 5.2  by Joe Hobbs (download pdf here)
 
Great Cormorant distribution map
 
File:PhalacrocoraxCarbo.png 
 
 breeding  resident passage non-breeding

SanoAK: Alexander Kürthy, CC BY-SA 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0>, via Wikimedia Commons