Brandt’s Cormorant (Urile penicillatus)
Brandt’s cormorants without breeding plumage (photo credit: Molly Sultany)
Description: During the breeding season, these cormorants have distinctly bright blue eyes and throat patches. Adult Brandt’s cormorants are usually 79 centimeters (about 31 inches) tall and weigh between 1400-2700 grams (about 49-95 ounces).
Habitat: Brandt’s cormorants inhabit the area along the California Current, which spans from British Columbia, Canada, down to Baja California, Mexico. These cormorants prefer the coastal islands and rocky areas along coastlines. As seabirds, they are rarely found inland, and don’t usually fly over land even in coastal areas.
Nesting: At Haystack rock, the Brandt’s cormorants are most commonly found nesting on top of the second needle, but several pairs also nest on flat shelves on the South wall of Haystack interspersed within the pelagic cormorant colony. They lay 1 to 6 light blue or white eggs and both parents share incubation responsibility and feeding the young once they hatch.
Diet: Brandt’s cormorants are excellent swimmers. They make use of this skill by diving from cliffs down into the water as far as 230 feet deep to capture prey. They prefer to forage in groups and their prey includes fish and squid, which they crush with their bills and then swallow headfirst.
Tide Pool Tidbits:
Their name honors German zoologist Johann Friedrich von Brandt, who described the species all the way back in 1838 based on information that came from a Russian exploration of North America’s coast.
The closest apparent relative to Brandt’s cormorants was the now-extinct species known as the spectacled cormorant. Also called Pallas’s cormorant, this bird was the largest cormorant species weighing up to 14 pounds! Unfortunately, it became extinct in the mid-19th century due to hunting.
Compared to the other cormorants found in North America, Brandt’s cormorants make the least amount of noise. Their call can only be heard from a few feet away.
The oldest Brandt’s cormorant ever documented was almost 18 years old!
Reference: The Cornell Lab, Audubon