Herb wrote:

>Ah! Finally an experimental protocol begins to emerge: since all cormorants
>eat fish and some cormorants are wing-spreaders one needs to look at the
>wettability of the feathers of DCCO, Pelagic, Brandt's, Reeds, etc.
>feathers in museum specimens. Sounds like an assignment for Dennis, to be
>reported either at the next WOS meeting or in the Journal of Irreproducible
>Results.

Well, I was hoping someone else would volunteer, but my curiosity got the
best of me. Not having a grant to do the sushi vs. pastrami study, I
decided to look at specimens. Preliminary results indicate that water
dropped on the primaries of Brandt's and Pelagic cormorants beads up, tends
to stay on the feather, while that dropped on the primaries of
Double-crested tends to run off "like water off a duck's back." The
difference seems to be real (2 wings of each species tested), but this is
exactly the opposite of what I would have predicted, knowing about the
birds! Under high magnification, the D-c feathers look as if the barbules
are more tightly packed, perhaps more impenetrable, than in the other 2
species, but this needs to be measured more carefully.

This will take some head scratching, indeed, and more lengthy experiments
than I have time for right at this moment. I'll try to get a
senior-research student interested in the project, but few of our students
here develop a real interest in birds (medical school, genetic engineering,
and environmental protection seem to offer more career possibilities).

Dennis Paulson, Director phone: (206) 756-3798
Slater Museum of Natural History fax: (206) 756-3352
University of Puget Sound e-mail: dpaulson at ups.edu
Tacoma, WA 98416