CUE A LOAD OF SHAG JOKES

Maxy was out birdwatching yesterday, and he got three snaps of this peculiar looking cormorant.


Now we know that cormorants do flaunt white head feathers in the breeding season. One authority (the URL at the bottom of this page) writes:


"Both subspecies acquire white heads prior to breeding, with some evidence that older birds have whiter heads. As an illustration, in a colony in coastal France comprised entirely of P.c.carbo, 92% of early breeders had white head feathers, while none of the later breeders showed this feature. The white head fades from egg-laying onwards, so while P.c.sinensis may average more white filoplumes at its peak than P.c.carbo, this is not a reliable character since it is dependent on the stage of breeding.

Perhaps one reason why it has been tempting to record white-headed birds at inland sites as P.c.sinensis is because only a proportion of birds in any breeding colony show the characteristic".

Now we had always thought that cormorants were cormorants, (unless they were shags) but it seems that there are two distinct subspecies jostling for our attention.

http://www.paxton-pits.org.uk/id.htm

Has lots more information, but does not get us any further in identifying this bird, whose fine white head plumage and what appears to be a yellow chin, seems far more marked than any other images that we have been able to find. Over to you guys...

Maxy had a particularly good day birdwatching (I could make twitching jokes but I won't), seeing two sorts of egret as well as some other goodies. Expect a full report on his blog in the next few days, although with his A-Levels looming it is not unsurprising that his postings are a little erratic at the moment.