 cormorant waddles clumsily due to the shortness of its legs and its large, webbed feet; underwater it is swift and graceful.
A Noisy neighbors
The flightless cormorant associates in small colonies of up to 12 breeding pairs and their offspring.
The guanay cormorant (Phalacrocorax bougainvillii) has a much wider range than its flightless cousin. It lives along the Pacific coast of South America from Peru to Chile and on the Atlantic coast of Argentina. Although the guanay cormorant can fly, it lives entirely in a marine environment and feeds mainly by diving, much like the flightless cormorant The guanay cormorant feeds entirely on fish, such as sardines. Reaching a length of 30″ and a weight of 7 lbs., the guanay cormorant is much smaller than its flightless cousin.
|Weight Length||5.5-9 lbs. 35-40″|
|Sexual Maturity||2 years|
|Breeding Season||All year, but mainly March -September|
|Number of Eggs||1-4; usually
|Incubation Period||About 35 days|
|Fledging Period||About 60 days|
|Breeding Interval||Usually 1 year, but may breed twice per year ;|
|Typical Diet||Fish, eels, squid and octopus|
• The flightless cormorant belongs to the order Pelecaniformes, which contains tropicbirds, pelicans, gannets, boobies, darters and frigatebirds. There are65 species in the order, but the cormorant family, Phalacrocoracidae, is the largest, with 39 species in only 1 genus. Relatives include the great cormorant, Phalacrocorax carbo and the bank cormorant, P. neglectus.