Tweeters,

Ulrich Wilson, the Wildlife Biologist for the Washington Islands National
Wildlife Refuge, has been monitoring nesting cormorants for many years and
he has told me that he believes that late nesting has evolved recently in
response to nest depredation by bald eagles. In bald eagles, the urge to
head for the salmon runs is apparently very strong and it provides a late
summer and early fall period of relief for nesting seabirds. Ulrich was
seeing Double-crested Cormorants fledging in November.

Any and all skepticism of this explanation is, of course, welcome.

Observations of Puget Sound cormorants nesting late in the season prior to
about 1988 (when bald eagles achieved a relative saturation of the Puget
Sound region) would argue against the bald eagle depredation theory.

Kelly McAllister

> >As we approached the long row of pilings that hold
> >hundreds of Double-crested Cormorant nests, we were surprized to see
> >that there were many nests that contained birds that had not yet fledged.
> >Indeed, one nest had chicks that were only a week or week and
> >a half old.