Hi Tweets,

It's standard wisdom in Vancouver BC that of the three cormorant species
here, only the Double-crested Cormorant Phalacrocorax auritus deliberately
flies over land (I'm not talking of cutting over narrow tidal sandbars or
small promontories here, but flights of several kilometers or miles over
land). In many hundreds of personal observations of cormorants over land
this has invariably been the case. Until today.

While at Canada Place checking out the auklet this evening, I noted a
Pelagic Cormorant P. pelagicus approaching Canada Place from the east
carrying some long reed-like vegetation to be used, I'd guess, for nesting
material (incidentally, does anyone know know *where* they get this stuff?
It always looks like cattail or some other type of reed, but I've never seen
cormorants actually near reedbeds). It passed overhead, then reversed
direction. It then followed a zig-zag path higher into the sky until it was
flying over the high-rise office towers of downtown Vancouver. Finally, at
an estimated altitude of ~300 meters, it began to fly straight south,
presumably toward the nesting colony under the Granville Street Bridge,
passing directly over downtown Vancouver and the West End, a comparatively
long-distance overland flight of about 2 km (1.2 mi).

Though I have lived here nearly thirty years, and am very familiar by now
with the behavior of both species, this is--for me, anyway--an unprecedented
observation, the first time I've ever seen a Pelagic *not* follow the
offshore contour of a shoreline to reach a feeding area or nesting colony.
As well, the zig-zag method of gaining height was different to what I've
observed with Double-crested: that species gains height much like geese, a
steady ramping up into the sky, sometimes circling as they rise.

Has anyone observed any similar significant-distance overland flights of
Pelagic Cormorants?

Michael Price
Vancouver BC Canada
mprice at mindlink.net