Hi Marcus,

To me it sounds more likely that the birds were of intermediate plumage
rather than of the Eastern subspecies.

Robert Pisano / Seattle


On May 20, 2008, at 9:12 AM, Marcus.D.Roening at gsk.com wrote:

> Hi Tweets,
>
> On May 17th, Heather and I were scoping a colony of nesting
> Double-crested Cormorants on the breakwater next to the marina of
> Drayton Harbor (across from Semiahmoo Resort). From the marina I
> counted 120 birds, although there could have been more on birds tucked
> in on the other side, as well.
>
> We were enjoying the fact the you could actually see the
> 'double-crests' on the cormorant. To me they looked like large black
> Groucho Marx bushy eyebrows that often stuck out at 90 degrees from
> the head when the wind hit them right. There is a great head
> illustration of the crests in the National Geographic Guide on the
> first plate of cormorants titled 'Double-crested eastern breeding
> adult' and for some reason not on the following page where the DC
> Cormorant is fully illustrated.
>
> All my bird guides illustrate that the western form of DC Cormorant
> (P. a. albociliatus) should have white plume feathers for the crests
> and not the bushy black crests. I scanned the whole flock carefully
> and only managed to find two birds with white crests and their white
> crests were thin and wispy.
>
> Can anybody shed any additional light on this? Also of interest were
> two Black Oystercatchers working around the jetty.
>
> Thank you,
>
> Marcus Roening
> Critical & Supportive Care
> Tacoma, WA
> marcus.d.roening at gsk.com
> C: (253) 988 8313
> _______________________________________________
> Tweeters mailing list
> Tweeters at u.washington.edu
> http://mailman1.u.washington.edu/mailman/listinfo/tweeters
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: not available
Type: text/enriched
Size: 2302 bytes
Desc: not available
Url : http://mailman1.u.washington.edu/pipermail/tweeters/attachments/20080520/0028f1d6/attachment.bin