cormorant

(Phalacrocorax carbo) Common cormorant cormorant, commonly known as osprey, belongs to the family Cormoraceae of birds, with 5 species in China, almost all over the country. Qinghai Lake is an ordinary cormorant, with a total length of 80cm and a weight of1700 ~ 2700g, and its whole body is blue-black with purple metallic luster. The mouth is thick, the eyes and mouth are short of feathers, the exposed skin is yellow, and there is a broad leucorrhea around the exposed part. The upper back and shoulder feathers are dark reddish brown, and the feather edge is black. There is a triangular white spot on each side of the waist during reproductive period. There are white silky feathers on the head and upper neck, and an inconspicuous crest on the back head. Wing color 314-340mm, tail length 90-154mm, migratory birds. The young bird is dark brown on the top and black on the bottom, mixed with white. The eyes are green, the mouth is brown, and the base of the lower mouth is grayish white, while the bare area and throat are dark red and the feet are black. Species: There are five species in China: cormorant (also known as common cormorant), spotted cormorant, sea cormorant, red-faced cormorant and black-necked cormorant. Common in southeast coastal provinces. Cormorants are widely distributed in rivers, lakes and seas of Eurasia and Africa.

Cormorants rarely sing, and grunt with guttural sounds during breeding, and are silent at other times. However, when there is a dispute between them for a favorable position when they live in groups, they will make a low cry of "goo, goo". Cormorants usually inhabit rivers and lakes, and often fly low and skim over the water. When flying, the neck and feet are straight. The flying posture is similar to that of geese, and they often fly in herringbone in groups. Sex is not afraid of people.

Fishing in the water alone or in groups. With webbed toes, he is good at swimming and diving. When resting on land or trees after a full meal, we often stretch our wings to dry our feathers in the sun. Breeding in central and northern China, large groups gather in Qinghai Lake. Migrate through central China, and winter in southern provinces, Hainan Island and Taiwan Province. There are tens of thousands of cormorants wintering in Mai Po Nature Reserve in Hong Kong every winter, and some birds stay there all year round, which is rare in other places. It is distributed in the east coast of North America, Europe, southern Russia, southern Siberia, northwestern and southern Africa, the Middle East, central Asia, India, China, Southeast Asia, Australia and New Zealand. Some birds are seasonal migratory birds.

Female birds lay eggs between January and August every year. Breed on cliffs or tall trees. The material for building a nest is rough, made of branches, fish bones, seaweed and weeds, and covered with fine grass. It is a hexagonal "house" with edges and corners, and it is straight. After nesting, 17-2 1 day begins to lay eggs, with 5-6 eggs in each nest, and the eggs weigh about 54g. Male and female adults hatch eggs alternately, and chicks can hatch in about 1 month. Parents feed their chicks together. After they return to their nests, they stand beside the chicks and open their mouths. The chicks put their mouths into the throats of their parents and take out undigested food. The bird can lay eggs normally under the condition of artificial domestication, and enters the breeding period in early summer every year. Each female bird can lay 6-20 eggs, and its breeding ecology is similar to that of domestic geese.

Cormorants have been domesticated and used for fishing since ancient times because of their superb fishing skills, fast diving and catching fish with hooked mouths at the tip. In Yunnan, Guangxi, Hunan and other places, cormorants are still domesticated for fishing. In the rivers, lakes and beaches in the southeast of China, it used to be common to see several or more artificially trained cormorants (commonly known as osprey and water duck) standing on narrow boats, working hard to help fish catch fish. Fishermen rowed the boat to many fish places, and rows of cormorants flew out of the boat, like wild ducks, swimming around in the water, diving in the water for a while, and then floating on the water. When fish was found, they dived into 1-3 meters, and the deepest dive was 19 meters, and the longest time could reach 70 seconds. A cormorant can catch more than 500 kilograms a year.

It is widely distributed all over the world, including North America (including the United States, Canada, Greenland, Bermuda, Saint Pierre and Miquelon Islands and the transitional zone between North America and Central America in Mexico), Eurasia and northern Africa (including the whole of Europe, Africa north of the Tropic of Cancer, Arabian Peninsula and Asia north of Himalaya-Hengduan Mountains-Minshan-Qinling-Huaihe River). ), south-central Africa (including the south of Arabian Peninsula and the whole African continent south of the Sahara Desert (Tropic of Cancer). ), the Indian subcontinent and the southwest of China (including India, Bangladesh, Bhutan, Sikkim, Nepal, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Maldives and the southeast of China and Tibet). ), Indo-China Peninsula and the southeast coastal areas of China (including Myanmar, Viet Nam, Laos, Cambodia, Thailand and the southeast coastal areas of China, Hongkong and Hainan Island). ), Pacific islands (including Taiwan Province Province of China, dongsha islands, Xisha Islands, zhongsha islands and Nansha Islands, as well as the Philippines, Brunei, Malaysia, Singapore, Sumatra, Java and Papua New Guinea. ), Australia and New Zealand (including Australia, New Zealand, Tasmania and its nearby islands. )

Common cormorants, striped geese, brown-headed gulls and fish gulls form the four major migratory birds in Qinghai Lake. The breeding grounds are concentrated in Sankuai Stone and the steep cliffs of Haixi Mountain, and there are also a small number of them at the western end of Haixi Mountain, with a total of about 4,500. Good at swimming and diving, good at fishing. It looks clumsy on land, often supported on the ground with hard tail feathers when it stops, and has a long rest time during the day. The singing is rough, sandy and unpleasant. Staple fish. Both male and female birds nest and hatch eggs in turn. The feeding method is special. The parent bird opens its mouth, and the chick sticks its mouth into its throat to feed on the semi-digested fish from the esophagus of the parent bird. When feeding water, the parent bird ejects water from its mouth like a syringe into the chick's mouth.

In late March, they moved to Qinghai Lake, and their nests were built on cliffs near the water where no one and animals interfered. Most of them were repaired and raised on the basis of the old nests in previous years. Columnar nests with a height of 40-70 cm can be seen on the steep cliff of Haixi Mountain. The nesting materials are shrub branches, grass stems and other sundries, and each nest lays 3-4 eggs, with an average weight of 54.4g.. The incubation period is 30-31day, and the cormorant chicks are always fed by their parents after hatching, and do not leave the nest until the chicks are fully developed and have the ability to fly and prey independently. Cormorants, the staple food fish, can dive 3-4 meters deep to catch big fish more than twice their own weight. The wintering ground of cormorants is in the Huhe area of Yunnan and Guizhou provinces, until the Ruili River on the border between China and Myanmar. It is listed as a provincial protected animal.

This species has been included in the List of Terrestrial Wild Animals Protected by the State or with Important Economic and Scientific Research Value issued by the State Forestry Administration on August 1 2000.