All species › Gannets and cormorants
Gannets and cormorants | Suliformes
Genten en aalscholvers | Alcatraces y cormoranes
Sea birds that take their food by diving after it under water. All four toes are joined by webbing — the hind toe is turned forward to take part — and the external nostrils are grown shut, so the bird breathes through its mouth and ships no water on entry. The throat skin is bare and stretchable, letting a large fish go down whole, and glands above the eyes get rid of the sea salt that comes in with it. They breed in dense colonies and have no brood patch: the eggs are kept warm under the blood-rich webs of the feet, and the young hatch naked and helpless and stay a long time at the nest.
Families in this order
- Gannets | Sulidae2 speciesLarge seabirds with a cigar-shaped body, long pointed wings and a wedge-shaped tail; the heavy conical bill has no hook, but its finely serrated cutting edges hold a slippery fish. The eyes are set well forward and give the depth judgement the plunge dive demands: from ten to thirty metres up the bird falls into the sea with its wings swept back, air sacs under the skin of head, neck and breast absorbing the impact. One egg a year, on a raised mound of seaweed and droppings on a cliff ledge or rock stack, in colonies that can run to tens of thousands of pairs. The chick hatches black and naked and needs four to five years to reach the adult white with black primaries.
- Cormorants | Phalacrocoracidae3 speciesLong-bodied dark waterbirds with a long neck and a bill sharply hooked at the tip: the fish is gripped, not speared. They dive from the surface and swim under water with both feet at once; the legs are set far back, which makes walking laboured, and the stiff wedge of a tail works as a rudder. The plumage lets itself be partly soaked, which cuts buoyancy but obliges the bird to dry off after fishing with its wings half spread — the posture the whole family is known by. The nest of sticks or weed stands in a colony on rock, in trees or in reedbeds; three or four pale blue eggs under a chalky coating, and naked young that put on black down within days.