Cormorant Image

Printing and Framing Cormorant Prints (Artwork) for Your Home or Office

This page is designed to give you ideas on types of prints that might work and some general information around your chosen animal prints theme. Order prints and have them carefully rolled and safely secured in a cardboard cylinder and delivered to your door.

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Cormorant Prints

Young cormorant name: chick

A group of cormorants is called: gulp, flight

Cormorant class: Bird

The bird family Phalacrocoracidae is represented by some 40 species of cormorants and shags. Several different classifications of the family have been proposed recently, and the number of genera is disputed.

There is no consistent distinction between cormorants and shags. The names cormorant and shag were originally the common names of the two species of the family found in Great Britain, Phalacrocorax carbo (now referred to by ornithologists as the Great Cormorant) and P. aristotelis (the Common Shag). Shag refers to the bird's crest, which the British forms of the Great Cormorant lack. As other species were discovered by English-speaking sailors and explorers elsewhere in the world, some were called cormorants and some shags, depending on whether they had crests or not. Sometimes the same species is called a cormorant in one part of the world and a shag in another, e.g., the Great Cormorant is called the Black Shag in New Zealand (the birds found in Australasia have a crest that is absent in European members of the species). Van Tets (1976) proposed to divide the family into two genera and attach the name Cormorant to one and Shag to the other, but this flies in the face of common usage and has not been widely adopted.

The scientific genus name is latinized Ancient Greek, from (phalakros, ald) and (korax, raven). This is often thought to refer to the creamy white patch on the cheeks of adult Great Cormorants, or the ornamental white head plumes prominent in Mediterranean birds of this species, but is certainly not a unifying characteristic of cormorants. Cormorant is a contraction derived from Latin corvus marinus, sea raven. Indeed, sea raven or analogous terms were the usual terms for cormorants in Germanic languages until after the Middle Ages. The French explorer Andr Thvet commented in 1558 that ...the beak similar to that of a cormorant or other corvid, which demonstrates that the erroneous belief that the birds were related to ravens lasted at least to the 16th century.

Cormorants and shags are medium-to-large seabirds. They range in size from the Pygmy Cormorant (Phalacrocorax pygmaeus), at as little as 45 cm (18 in) and 340 g (12 oz), to the Flightless Cormorant (Phalacrocorax harrisi), at a maximum size 100 cm (40 in) and 5 kg (11 lb). The recently-extinct Spectacled Cormorant (Phalacrocorax perspicillatus) was rather larger, at an average size of 6.3 kg (14 lb). The majority, including nearly all Northern Hemisphere species, have mainly dark plumage, but some Southern Hemisphere species are black and white, and a few (e.g. the Spotted Shag of New Zealand) are quite colourful. Many species have areas of coloured skin on the face (the lores and the gular skin) which can be bright blue, orange, red or yellow, typically becoming more brightly coloured in the breeding season. The bill is long, thin, and sharply hooked. Their feet have webbing between all four toes, as in their relatives.

They are coastal rather than oceanic birds, and some have colonised inland waters - indeed, the original ancestor of cormorants seems to have been a fresh-water bird, judging from the habitat of the most ancient lineage. They range around the world, except for the central Pacific islands.

All are fish-eaters, dining on small eels, fish, and even water snakes. They dive from the surface, though many species make a characteristic half-jump as they dive, presumably to give themselves a more streamlined entry into the water. Under water they propel themselves with their feet. Some cormorant species have been found, using depth gauges, to dive to depths of as much as 45 metres.

Cormorants are colonial nesters, using trees, rocky islets, or cliffs. The eggs are a chalky-blue colour. There is usually one brood a year. The young are fed through regurgitation. They typically have deep, ungainly bills, showing a greater resemblance to those of the pelicans', to which they are related, than is obvious in the adults.

Cormorant Trivia

What do you call a baby cormorant?
Answer: A baby cormorant is called a chick.

What do you call a group of cormorants?
Answer: A group of cormorants are called a gulp, flight.

Question: What class is a cormorant in?
Answer: A cormorant is in the bird class.