Notes

1. GIFU CITY, JAPAN

1. The epigraph is from a personal communication with Junji Yamashita, translated by Munro Johnson, August 7, 2001. All of Yamashita’s quotations in this chapter are from this interview.

2. Henry Spencer Palmer, “Cormorant Fishing in Japan,” in Letters from the Land of the Rising Sun (Yokohama: Japan Mail, 1894), 172; Kiyoshi Otsuka, personal communication, August 9, 2001.

3. David Landis Barnhill, trans. Bashō’s Journey: The Literary Prose of Matsuo Bashō (Albany: SUNY Press, 2005), 110.

4. Zempei Yamashita, “Cormorant Fishing on the Nagara River,” Oceanus 30, no. 1 (Spring 1987): 84. In Japanese it is omoshirōte / yagate kanashiki / ubune kana. Barnhill translates it this way:

fascinating,
and then sorrowful:
cormorant boat.

5.“Ukai: Cormorant Fishing on the Nagara River,” 2012, Gifu Convention and Visitors Bureau, Gifu, Japan, www.gifucvb.or.jp/en/01_sightseeing/01_01.html.

6. India and Korea: Andres von Brandt, Fish Catching Methods of the World (Surrey, England: Fishing News Books Ltd., 1984), 27; Egypt: Darryl Wheye and Donald Kennedy, Humans, Nature, and Birds: Science Art from Cave Walls to Computer Screens (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2008), 21.

7. Hermann Leight, Pre-Inca Art and Culture, trans. Mervyn Savill (New York: Orion Press, 1960), 49–50.

8. Christine E. Jackson, “Fishing with Cormorants,” Archives of Natural History 24, no. 2 (1997): 189; Pamela Egremont and Miriam Rothschild, “The Calculating Cormorants,” Biological Journal of the Linnean Society 12 (September 1979): 181.

9. Maya Manzi and Oliver T. Coomes, “Cormorant Fishing in Southwestern China: A Traditional Fishery under Siege,” American Geographical Society 92, no. 4 (October 2002): 602; Erling Ho, “Flying Fishes of Wucheng,” Natural History 107, no. 8 (October 1988): 66.

10. Berthold Laufer, “The Domestication of the Cormorant in China and Japan,” Field Museum of Natural History No. 300: Anthropological Series 18, no. 3 (1931): 209.

11. This portion of the Sui shu was completed in 636 CE. Laufer, “Domestication of the Cormorant,” 212, 233. Cormorants figured in some of Japan’s earliest mythology and writing. Ukai is mentioned in the Manyoshu, the earliest book of Japanese poems, compiled in the eighth century. There is a reference to ukai in the Tale of Genji, normally credited to Lady Murasaki Shikibu in the early eleventh century.

12. In 702 CE, census records in a town near Gifu City show a person with the name Ukaibe or Uyobe, suggesting this would have been an usho. Census records during the Engi period (901–22 CE) reference seven houses of cormorant fishermen on the Nagara River. See Laufer, “Domestication of the Cormorant,” 213; and E. W. Gudger, “Fishing with the Cormorant in Japan,” Scientific Monthly 29, no. 1 (July 1929): 10.

13. S. Ikenoya, “Cormorant Fishing,” Japan Magazine, May 1917, 31–32, as cited in Gudger, “Fishing with the Cormorant,” 10.

14. Yamashita, “Cormorant Fishing,” 83.

15. Gudger, “Fishing with the Cormorant,” 11; Ukai Exhibit, Gifu History Museum, Gifu, Japan, 2001.

16. Yamashita, “Cormorant Fishing,” 83–84.

17. In the eighteenth century, the scholar Norinaga Moroori wrote of ukai in Gifu: “Nowhere but in the Nagara can we see / That antique sight of cormorant fishing, / So picturesque and impressive, / Bonfires reflected in the water rushing.” See ibid., 83.

18. Laufer, “Domestication of the Cormorant,” 213, 255; see also a record of cormorant feathers used to roof birthing huts in a Japanese folktale titled “The Lost Fish-Hook,” as told in C. Pfoundes, “The Lost Fish-Hook,” Folk-Lore Record 1 (1878): 128.

19. Gudger, “Fishing with the Cormorant,” 11–12.

20. The Diary of Richard Cocks, ed. Edward Maunde Thompson, vol. 1 (London: Hakluyt Society, 1883), 285.

21. Palmer, “Cormorant Fishing in Japan,” 171.

22. Ibid., 172–73.

23. Jackson, “Fishing with Cormorants,” 199.

24. See Elfriede R. Knauer, “Fishing with Cormorants: A Note on Vittore Carpaccio’s Hunting on the Lagoon,” Apollo 158, no. 499 (September 2003): 32–39; and Jackson, “Fishing with Cormorants,” 199–201. Both Knauer and Jackson point out that the practice was also recorded in Pietro Longhi’s eighteenth-century painting. The two scholars differ on whether the clay balls are for the fish or to make the cormorants cough up the fish. The former makes more sense to me. See Von Brandt, Fish Catching Methods, 49–51.

25. Jackson, “Fishing with Cormorants,” 202; Laufer, “Domestication of the Cormorant,” 206.

26. James Edmund Harting, “Fishing with Cormorants,” in Essays on Sport and Natural History (London: Horace Cox, 1883), 429.

27. Jackson, “Fishing with Cormorants,” 203–6.

28. Ibid., 201.

29. Ibid.

30. See Jean Baptiste Emmanuel Hector Le Couteulx de Canteleu, La Pêche au Cormoran (Paris: Bureaux de la Revue Britannique, 1870). For nineteenth-century cormorant fishing in France, see also Pierre-Amédée Pichot, Les Oiseaux de Sport (Paris: Librairie ad Legoupy, 1903), 27–35.

31. Laufer, “Domestication of the Cormorant,” 207.

32. Franck Maubert, Toulouse-Lautrec in Paris (New York: Assouline, 2004), 9; Gerstle Mack, Toulouse-Lautrec (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1938), 226.

33. Laufer, “Domestication of the Cormorant,” 236. Translated from Pichot, Les Oiseaux de Sport (1903).

34. U.S.: Daniel Mannix, A Sporting Chance: Unusual Methods of Hunting (New York: E. P. Dutton & Co., 1967), 143–47; Macedonia (Lake Dojran): Lonely Planet, The Europe Book: A Journey through Every Country on the Continent (Victoria, Australia: Lonely Planet, 2010), 148; Von Brandt, Fish Catching Methods, 30–31.

35. Von Brandt, Fish Catching Methods, 29; Carolyn Thornton, “Peruvian Villagers on Floating Islands Welcome Tour Bus Visitors,” Dallas Morning News, February 19, 2009, www.newsbank.com. Adolph F. Bandelier in 1910 wrote of the native peoples “robbing the nests,” presumably to eat the eggs and/or chicks; in Bandelier, The Islands of Titicaca and Koati (New York: Hispanic Society of America, 1910), 34. Decades later, Jacques Cousteau wrote of the Urus eating their domesticated cormorants. In Jacques-Yves Cousteau and Philippe Diolé, Three Adventures: Galápagos, Titicaca, the Blue Holes, trans. J. F. Bernard (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1973), 133.

36. Tomoya Akimichi, “The Japanese Table: Queen of Freshwater Streams,” Food Forum (c. 2005) Back Issues, Kikkoman, www.kikkoman.com/foodforum/thejapanesetablebackissues/11.shtml.

37. Also known with the common name of Temminck’s cormorants.

38. See, for example, Gal Ribak, Daniel Weihs, and Zeev Arad, “How Do Cormorants Counter Buoyancy during Submerged Swimming?” Journal of Experimental Biology 207 (2004): 2102.

39. Egremont and Rothschild, “Calculating Cormorants,” 181.

40. See, for example, J. Bryan Nelson, Pelicans, Cormorants and Their Relatives (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), 99; and Mannix, Sporting Chance, 143–47.

41. Frédéric Fougea (director/cowriter) and Zhu Xiao Ling (cowriter), He Dances for His Cormorants (Boréales Production, 1993), 26 mins. See also a children’s novel, set on the Li River: Elizabeth Starr Hill, Bird Boy (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1999).

42. Palmer, “Cormorant Fishing in Japan,” 173–74; Gudger, “Fishing with the Cormorant,” 28.

43. Laufer, “Domestication of the Cormorant,” 238; Fougea and Zhu Xiao Ling, He Dances for His Cormorants.

44. Lawrence E. Joseph, “Man and Cormorant,” Audubon 88 (May 1986): 40.

45. Shiro Kasuya, personal communication, January 3, 2006.

46. Arthur Waley, The Nō Plays of Japan (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1921), 163.

47. Ibid., 165.

48. Kiyoshi Otsuka, personal communication, August 9, 2001.

49. Kazuto Hino, personal communication, August 19, 2001, and February 25, 2012; “Japan: Gifu: Gifu City,” 1995–2010, City Population, www.citypopulation.de/Japan-Gifu.html.

50. Kazuto Hino, personal communication, February 25, 2012.

51. Kazuto Hino, personal communication, January 18, 2006.

52. Shiro Kasuya, Soichi Murase, and Yuichi Miyano, “Destructive Effects of the Estuary Dam on the Nagara River’s Environment, and the Program for Its Regeneration,” Bulletin of the Faculty of Regional Studies, Gifu University 20 (2007): 2.

53. Ibid., 13.

54. Ibid., 15.

2. HENDERSON HARBOR, UNITED STATES

Mark Clymer is quoted in Jodi Wilgoren’s “A Bird That’s on a Lot of Hit Lists,” New York Times, January 18, 2002, A12.

1. Ron Ditch, personal communications, July 7, 2001, March 18, 2012, and April 17, 2012. All quotations unless otherwise specified are from one of these three interviews. For other accounts of the evening see Susan McGrath, “Shoot-out at Little Galloo,” Smithsonian, February 2003, 72–78, and Dennis Wild, The Double-Crested Cormorant: Symbol of Ecological Conflict (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2012), 5.

2. The others are the pelagic cormorant (P. pelagicus), the red-faced (P. urile), the Brandt’s (P. penicillatus), the neotropic (P. brasilianus), and the great cormorant (carbo).

3. Linda R. Wires and Francesca J. Cuthbert, “Historic Populations of the Double-Crested Cormorant (Phalacrocorax auritus): Implications for Conservation and Management in the 21st Century,” Waterbirds 29, no. 1 (2006): 24–27; Jeremy J. Hatch, “Changing Populations of Double-Crested Cormorants,” in The Double-Crested Cormorant: Biology, Conservation and Management, ed. David N. Nettleship and David C. Duffy, Colonial Waterbirds 18, Special Publication 1 (1995), 10.

4. Hatch, “Changing Populations,” 10; Shauna Hanisch, personal communication, March 11, 2008.

5. Paul Johnsgard, Cormorants, Darters, and Pelicans of the World (Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1993), 108; Jeremy J. Hatch and D. V. Weseloh, “Double-Crested Cormorant (Phalacrocorax auritus),” in The Birds of North America, ed. A. Poole and F. Gill, no. 441 (Philadelphia: Birds of North America Inc., 1999), 17.

6. For calculations of double-crested cormorant survivorship of eggs and adults see U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, “Final Environmental Impact Statement: Double-Crested Cormorant Management in the United States” (Arlington, VA, 2003), 29.

7. Hatch and Weseloh, “Double-Crested Cormorant,” 20; Nelson, Pelicans, Cormorants and Their Relatives, 181.

8. Hatch and Weseloh, “Double-Crested Cormorant,” 20.

9. M. Kathleen Klimkiewicz and Anthony G. Futcher, “Longevity Records of North American Birds, Supplement 1,” Journal of Field Ornithology 60, no. 4 (Autumn 1989): 473. David Bird gives the oldest recorded double-crested cormorant as twenty-three years old, but without any reference. See David M. Bird, The Bird Almanac (Buffalo, NY: Firefly Books, 1999), 267.

10. T. Fransson, T. Kolehmainen, C. Kroon, L. Jansson, and T. Wenninger, “EURING List of Longevity Records for European Birds,” November 20, 2010, EURING Bird Ringing Databank, www.euring.org/data_and_codes/longevity-voous.htm.

11. U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, “Final Environmental Assessment: Extended Management of Double-Crested Cormorants” (Arlington, VA, 2009), 6. Lewis did the same. See Harrison Flint Lewis, The Natural History of the Double-Crested Cormorant (Ottawa: H. C. Miller, 1929), 8.

12. USFWS, “Final Environmental Impact Statement: Double-Crested Cormorant Management in the United States,” 23; Laura A. Tyson, Jerrold L. Belant, Francesca J. Cuthbert, and D. V. (Chip) Weseloh, “Nesting Populations of Double-Crested Cormorants in the United States and Canada,” Symposium on Double-Crested Cormorants: Population Status and Management Issues in the Midwest, Technical Bulletin 1879, ed. Mark E. Tobin (USDA-APHIS, 1999), 20; USFWS, “Final Environmental Assessment: Extended Management of Double-Crested Cormorants,” 5.

13. R. J. Pierotti and T. P. Good, “Herring Gull (Larus argentatus),” 1994, in The Birds of North America Online, ed. A. Poole, Cornell Lab of Ornithology, http://bna.birds.cornell.edu/bna/species/124; Thomas B. Mowbray, Craig R. Ely, James S. Sedinger, and Robert E. Trost, “Canada Goose (Branta canadensis),” 2002, in Birds of North America Online, http://bna.birds.cornell.edu/bna/species/682.

14. Phalacrocorax auritus auritus [Interior and Atlantic]; P.a. cincinatus [Alaska/BC]; P.a. albociliatus [BC to Baja, inland to Rockies]; P.a. floridanus [Florida, Caribbean]; P.a. heuretus [Bahamas, Cuba]. In Hatch and Weseloh, “Double-Crested Cormorant,” 5. New research suggests this might soon be changing. See Dacey Mercer, “Phylogeography and Population Genetic Structure of Double-Crested Cormorants (Phalacrocorax auritus)” (PhD diss., Oregon State University, 2008).

15. USFWS, “Final Environmental Assessment: Extended Management of Double-Crested Cormorants,” 5. The Pacific and Alaska are sometimes split into two population management groups, as they are separate subspecies. See the discussion about this in my later chapter 5, “East Sand Island.”

16. Andrew C. Revkin, “A Slaughter of Cormorants in Angler Country,” New York Times, August 1, 1998, B5.

17. Tommy L. Brown and Nancy A. Connelly, “Lake Ontario Sportfishing: Trends, Analysis, and Outlook,” Human Dimensions Research Unit, Cornell University, Series No. 09–3 (June 2009), 7.

18. Ibid., 2.

19. Ron Ditch, personal communication, April 17, 2012.

20. Robert M. Ross and James H. Johnson, “Fish Losses to Double-Crested Cormorant Predation in Eastern Lake Ontario, 1992–97,” Symposium on Double-Crested Cormorants: Population Status and Management Issues in the Midwest, Technical Bulletin 1879, ed. Mark E. Tobin (USDA-APHIS, 1999), 61.

21. Russell D. McCullough, James F. Farquhar, and Irene M. Mazzocchi, “Cormorant Management Activities in Lake Ontario’s Eastern Basin,” NYSDEC Lake Ontario Annual Report, Section 13 (2010), 2; Irene Mazzocchi, personal communication, April 18, 2012.

22. Ross and Johnson, “Fish Losses,” 61; Irene Mazzocchi, personal communication, April 18, 2012.

23. Chip Weseloh, personal communication, April 20, 2012; Jennifer Doucette, personal communication, April 10, 2012; C. M. Somers, V. A. Kjoss, F. A. Leighton, and D. Fransden, “American White Pelicans and Double-Crested Cormorants in Saskatchewan: Population Trends over Five Decades,” Blue Jay 68, no. 2 (June 2010): 85; Keith A. Hobson, Richard W. Knapton, and Walter Lysack, “Population, Diet and Reproductive Success of Double-Crested Cormorants Breeding on Lake Winnipegosis, Manitoba, in 1987,” Colonial Waterbirds 12, no. 2 (1989): 193; Scott Wilson, personal communication, September 10, 2012.

24. D. V. Weseloh and B. Collier, “The Rise of the Double-Crested Cormorant on the Great Lakes: Winning the War against Contaminants,” Great Lakes Fact Sheet, Environment Canada, Ontario Region, Catalogue No. EN 40–222/2–1995E (1995), 7. This source reports 10,000 nests in Canadian Lake Ontario in 1993. Irene Mazzocchi of NYSDEC records 2,477 pairs at five Canadian sites in the Eastern Basin in 1996 (personal communication, February 20, 2013). In the 1970s there were very few nests in the region of the Great Lakes. By 2000, cormorant populations had skyrocketed to about 115,000 pairs throughout the Canadian and U.S. Great Lakes. See Shauna L. Hanisch and Paul R. Schmidt, “Resolving Double-Crested Cormorant Phalacrocorax auritus Conflicts in the United States: Past, Present, and Future,” in Waterbirds around the World, ed. G. C. Boere, C. A. Galbraith, and D. A. Stroud (Edinburgh: Stationery Office, 2006), 826.

25. B. F. Lantry, T. H. Eckert, and C. P. Schneider, “The Relationship between the Abundance of Smallmouth Bass and Double-Crested Cormorants in the Eastern Basin of Lake Ontario,” in New York State Department of Environmental Conservation Bureau of Fisheries and USGS, Biological Resources Division, “Final Report: To Assess the Impact of Double-Crested Cormorant Predation on the Smallmouth Bass and Other Fishes of the Eastern Basin of Lake Ontario” (February 1, 1999), Section 12, 1–4.

26. James H. Johnson, Russell D. McCullough, and James Farquhar, “Double-Crested Cormorant Studies at Little Galloo Island, Lake Ontario in 2010: Diet Composition, Fish Consumption and the Efficacy of Management Activities in Reducing Fish Predation,” NYSDEC Lake Ontario Annual Report (2010), section 14, 1.

27. Ron Ditch, personal communication, July 7, 2001.

28. Russell McCullough, personal communication, April 18, 2012.

29. Johnson, McCullough, and Farquhar, “Double-Crested Cormorant Studies,” section 14, 2.

30. For a thorough review of all methods see David N. Carss and the Diet Assessment and Food Intake Working Group, “Techniques for Assessing Cormorant Diet and Food Intake: Towards a Consensus View,” February 21, 2001, Wetlands International Cormorant Research Group, http://web.tiscalinet.it/sv2001/WI%20-%20CRSG/diet_ foodintake.htm. A new, fourth method is emerging, using stable isotopes from the muscle tissue of cormorants, but this also requires killing the birds. See Jennifer L. Doucette, Björn Wissel, and Christopher M. Somers, “Cormorant-Fisheries Conflicts: Stable Isotopes Reveal a Consistent Niche for Avian Piscivores in Diverse Food Webs,” Ecological Applications 21, no. 8 (2011): 2987–3001.

31. Hatch and Weseloh, “Double-Crested Cormorant,” 7.

32. Howard L. Mendall, “The Home-Life and Economic Status of the Double-Crested Cormorant, Phalacrocorax auritus auritus (Orono, ME: University of Maine, 1936), 113.

33. Zzrmags, “Cormorant vs Rat,” January 6, 2009, www.youtube.com; Johnsgard, Cormorants, Darters, and Pelicans, 149,162.

34. Hatch and Weseloh, “Double-Crested Cormorant,” 10.

35. D. V. Weseloh and J. Casselman, “Calculated Fish Consumption by Double-Crested Cormorants in Eastern Lake Ontario” (abstract), Colonial Waterbird Society Bulletin 16, no. 2 (1992): 64. A 1927 account of double-crested cormorants, of the slightly smaller Florida subspecies, said the cormorants in captivity ate between 0.75 to 1.0 pounds of fish per day, with none on Sunday. See A. Wetmore, “The Amount of Food Consumed by Cormorants,” Condor 29 (November 1927): 274. For an introduction in studying cormorant diet based on caloric intake rather than weight of food, see Erica H. Dunn, “Caloric Intake of Nestling Double-Crested Cormorants,” Auk 92, no. 3 (1975): 553–65.

36. Hatch and Weseloh, “Double-Crested Cormorant,” 2; Nelson, Pelicans, Cormorants and Their Relatives, 589.

37. Thomas McIlwraith, The Birds of Ontario (Hamilton, ON: A. Lawson, 1886), 47.

38. T. S. Roberts, Birds of Minnesota, vol. 1 (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1936), 171. See also David R. Cline and Eric Dornfeld, “The Agassiz Refuge Cormorant Colony,” Loon 40, no. 3 (September 1978): 68.

39. Jennifer Doucette, personal communication, July 12, 2012.

40. Howard White and Karen Allanach (contacts), “Press Release: HSUS Offers Reward for Information on Cormorant Mass Slaying in Michigan,” Humane Society of the United States (June 15, 2000), www.hsus.org/news/pr/061500_michigan.html; Les Line, “A Conflict of Cormorants,” Wildlife Conservation, February 2002, 47.

41. Wilgoren, “Bird That’s on a Lot of Hit Lists,” A12.

42. Jim Moodie, “Cormorant Nests Dwindle on Huron Due to Natural Ebb and Vigilante Culls: MNR Survey Shows Nine Colonies ‘Shot Up’ on Georgian Bay, N. Channel,” Manitoulin Expositor, March 19, 2008, www.manitoulin.ca/Expositor/oldfiles/mar19_2008.htm.

43. Judith Minty, “Destroying the Cormorant Eggs,” Walking with the Bear (East Lansing: Michigan State University Press, 2000), 162. See the Associated Press and Special to the Sentinel, “Untouched Cormorant Eggs Found,” Milwaukee Sentinel, June 19, 1987, pt. 2, 10.

44. Wires and Cuthbert, “Historic Populations,” 29.

45. Barry Kent MacKay and Liz White, “A Critical Analysis of Point Pelee National Park’s Rationale for Killing the Middle Island Cormorants,” Cormorant Defenders International, February 2008, 13, 31–32; Wires and Cuthbert, “Historic Populations,” 15.

46. MacKay and White, “Critical Analysis,” 30.

47. Chas. S. Whitehead, “Loon Lake,” Ornithologist and Oölogist 12, no. 2 (February 1887): 21. This source, among several others I cite, identified earlier by Wires and Cuthbert, “Historic Populations.”

48. Frank W. Langdon, “Observations of Cincinnati Birds,” Journal of the Cincinnati Society of Natural History 1 (October 1878): 117–18.

49. Mendall, “Home-Life,” 4–6; Wires and Cuthbert, “Historic Populations,” 9–10, 15–16; Jerome A.Jackson and Bette J. S.Jackson, “The Double-Crested Cormorant in the South-Central United States: Habitat and Population Changes of a Feathered Pariah,” in Nettleship and Duffy, Double-Crested Cormorant, 119–21.

50. Lewis, Natural History, 88.

51. Ibid., 67; see also P. A. Taverner, “The Double-Crested Cormorant (Phalacrocorax auritus) and Its Relation to the Salmon Industries on the Gulf of St. Lawrence,” Museum Bulletin no. 13 / Biological Series, no. 5 (April 30, 1915): 1–24.

52. The Interior population has regularly been by far the largest in North America, more so than the other three combined.

53. Lewis, Natural History, 7–8.

54. Ibid., 5.

55. See, for example, Hatch, “Changing Populations,” 13.

56. D. V. Weseloh, P.J. Ewins, J. Struger, P. Mineau, C. A. Bishop, S. Postupalsky, and J. P. Ludwig, “Double-Crested Cormorants of the Great Lakes: Changes in Population Size, Breeding Distribution and Reproductive Output between 1913 and 1991,” in Nettle-ship and Duffy, Double-Crested Cormorant, 50. At this time there were fewer than one thousand nests across all of the Great Lakes.

57. Hatch, “Changing Populations,” 13.

58. Weseloh and Collier, “Rise of the Double-Crested Cormorant,” 4–5; Hatch and Weseloh, “Double-Crested Cormorant,” 23.

59. It used to be taught that cormorants incubated eggs under their webbed feet—which made their eggs especially vulnerable to these shell-thinning pesticides, especially when they took off out of the nest in a hurry —but, according to Nelson, this brooding style in cormorants has been discounted recently. Cormorants warm their eggs with the heat of their bodies over the skin of their feet, but they do not have as cozy a featherless brood patch as do other birds. See Nelson, Pelicans, Cormorants and Their Relatives, 176.

60. Weseloh and Collier, “Rise of the Double-Crested Cormorant,” 8.

61. Weseloh, Ewins, Struger, et al., “Double-Crested Cormorants,” 50.

62. Hatch, “Changing Populations,” 13; “Double-Crested Cormorant: Conservation Status,” National Audubon Society, http://birds.audubon.org/species/doucor (accessed August 29, 2012).

63. John L. Trapp, Thomas J. Dwyer, John J. Doggett, and John G. Nickum, “Management Responsibilities and Policies for Cormorants: United States Fish and Wildlife Service,” in Nettleship and Duffy, Double-Crested Cormorant, 226.

64. For details on pre-2003 activities see USFWS, “Final Environmental Impact Statement: Double-Crested Cormorant Management in the United States,” 11.

65. USFWS, “Final Environmental Assessment: Extended Management of Double-Crested Cormorants,” 1.

66. Ontario Parks, “Resource Management Implementation Plan High Bluff and Gull Islands” (Queen’s Printer for Ontario, 2011), 19; Ontario Parks, “Annual Report on the Management of Double-Crested Cormorants at Presqu’ile Provincial Park” (Queens Printer for Ontario, 2006), 18.

67. For public response see, for example, Thomas Walkolm, “Government Takes Aim at Cormorants: Ministry Showing a Crazy Kind of George W. Bush Logic,” Toronto Star, May 28, 2005, www.zoocheck.com/cdiwebsite.

68. See, for example, Cormorant Defenders International, “Bloody Carnage in Provincial Park,” media release, May 29, 2006, www.zoocheck.com/CDIwebsite/CorMediareleaseCarnageMay2906.shtml.

69. See, for example, CBC News / Prince Edward Island, “Fishermen Want Cormorant Cull,” CBC News, January 30, 2012, www.cbcca.

70. Chip Weseloh, personal communication, April 20, 2012; McGrath, “Shoot-out at Little Galloo,” 78.

71. Russell McCullough, personal communications, July 9, 2001, April 18, 2012. All the following quotations are from these two interviews unless otherwise specified.

72. Evidence is emerging that lampreys might be native. See, for example, P. Fuller, L. Nico, E. Maynard, J. Larson, and A. Fusaro, “Petromyzon marinus,” USGS Non-indigenous Aquatic Species Database (Gainesville, FL, 2012), http://nas.er.usgs.gov.

73. Russell McCullough, “Lake Ontario Milestones,” personal notes, 2012; Weseloh, Ewins, Struger, et al., “Double-Crested Cormorants,” 55–56.

74. See Alban Guillaumet, Brian Dorr, Guiming Wang, Jimmy D. Taylor 2nd, Richard B. Chipman, Heidi Scherr, Jeff Bowman, Kenneth F. Abraham, Terry J. Doyle, and Elizabeth Cranker, “Determinants of Local and Migratory Movements of Great Lakes Double-Crested Cormorants,” Behavioral Ecology 22 (2011): 1096–1103.

75. McCullough, Farquhar, and Mazzocchi, “Cormorant Management Activities,” section 13, 1; Russ McCullough and Irene Mazzocchi, personal communication, September 13, 2012. McCullough and Mazzocchi explained to me that “the cormorant predation impact target (feeding days) is based on an unmanaged population associated with 1,500 nesting pairs (3,000 nesting adults, 300 subadults, 3,000 fledged chicks) or approximately 780,000 feeding days.”

76. New York State scientists report: “Smallmouth bass abundance in the Eastern Basin as measured in index gill nets (CPUE = 6.1) decreased 30.0% compared to the 2006–2010 average, but was 45.9% higher than the record-low 2000–2004 period. Improved growth and a reduction in cormorant predation pressure likely contributed to the increased CPUEs observed from 2005–2011.” (CPUE is catch per unit of effort.) See NYSDEC, “Executive Summary,” 2011 Annual Report, Bureau of Fisheries, Lake Ontario Unit and St. Lawrence River Unit (March 2012), 6.

77. Johnson, McCullough, and Farquhar, “Double-Crested Cormorant Studies,” section 14, 3; Russ McCullough explained to me: “Gobies were first confirmed from Lake Ontario in 1999. They were first found in cormorant diets in Canadian colonies in 2002 and at Little Galloo Island in 2004. They were the primary prey in all three monitored Lake Ontario colonies by 2005.” See NYSDEC annual reports. Russ McCullough, personal communication, May 1, 2012.

78. Jim Farquhar, personal communication, April 18, 2012; Irene Mazzocchi, personal communication, April 18, 2012.

3. ARAN ISLANDS, IRELAND

Synge’s epigraph is from The Aran Islands (London: George Allen, 1934), 48; Nicolson’s is from Sea Room: An Island Life in the Hebrides (New York: Harper Perennial, 2007), 184.

1. Liam O’Flaherty’s “The Wounded Cormorant” first appeared in the Nation [and the Athenaeum], November 28, 1925, 317–18. O’Flaherty then published it in his collection The Tent (London: Cape, 1926). See Angeline A. Kelly, Liam O’Flaherty the Storyteller (New York: Harper & Row, 1976), 149.

2. Rónadh Cox, personal communication, August 28, 2012. See also Rónadh Cox, Danielle B. Zentner, Brian J. Kirchner, and Mea S. Cook, “Boulder Ridges on the Aran Islands (Ireland): Recent Movements Caused by Storm Waves, Not Tsunami,” Journal of Geology 120, no. 3 (May 2012): 249–72.

3. Liam O’Flaherty, Liam O’Flaherty’s Short Stories (London: New English Library, 1981), 2:30–32. All quotations from this story are from this edition.

4. Hatch, “Changing Populations,” 8.

5. Oxford English Dictionary, 2nd ed., online version, s.v. “cormorant, n.,” www.oed.com/viewdictionaryentry/Entry/41582.

6. See, for example, John M. Marzluff and Tony Angell, In the Company of Crows and Ravens (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2005), 1–10.

7. Edward A. Armstrong, The Folklore of Birds (London: Collins, 1958), 83.

8. Kevin De Ornellas, “‘Fowle Fowles?’: The Sacred Pelican and the Profane Cormorant in Early Modern Culture,” in A Cultural History of Animals, vol. 3, In the Renaissance, ed. Bruce Boehrer (New York: Berg, 2007), 36; Kevin De Ornellas, personal communication, October 16, 2004.

9. See King James Bible: Deuteronomy 14.17, Leviticus 11.17, Isaiah 34.11, and Zephaniah 2.14.

10. James Spedding, The Letters and the Life of Francis Bacon (London: Longmans, Green, and Co., 1890), 1:245. The context of this has “cormorant” here as not just connected with evil, but too with greed: she is complaining about the servants of her other, more famous son Francis, believing that they were after his money. See also Walter Begley, Is It Shakespeare? (London: John Murray, 1903), 49.

11. Professor Gordon McMullan, King’s College, London, has recently lectured expertly on the subject.

12. De Ornellas, “ ‘Fowle Fowles?’” 45.

13. John Milton, Paradise Lost, ed. Alastair Fowler, 2nd ed. (London: Longman, 1998), 227–28.

14. Ibid., 228 n. Consider also Andrea Mantegna’s fifteenth-century painting Agony in the Garden, in which a vulture-like bird, but potentially a cormorant, looms on a bare tree limb, symbolizing death, watching Christ pray to angels as Judas arrives with Roman soldiers. Is this where Milton got the idea?

15. Homer, The Odyssey of Homer, trans. Richmond Lattimore (New York: Harper-Perennial, 1991), 196. This is toward the end of book 12, lines 415–19. See also J. MacLair Boraston, “The Birds of Homer,” Journal of Hellenic Studies 31 (1991): 216–50.

16. Scott, The Antiquary (1816); Shelley, “The Witch of Atlas” (1820); Melville, Moby-Dick (1851), discussed further in chapter 11; Browning, “Balaustian’s Adventure” (1871); Verne, Off on a Comet or Hector Servadac (1877); Yeats, “The Madness of King Goll” (1887). See also Andrew Marvell, “The Unfortunate Lover” (1648–49).

17. See Susan B. Taylor, “Brontë’s Jane Eyre,” Explicator 59, no. 4 (2001): 182–85.

18. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, “The Skeleton in Armor,” in The Complete Poetical Works of Longfellow (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1922), 13.

19. Charles Swainson, The Folklore and Provincial Names of British Birds (London: Elliot Stock, 1886), 143; see Peter Coleman, “History and Legends of St. Botolph’s Church,” Lincolnshire Poacher 11, no. 2 (Summer 2010): 12. Cormorants on top of towers are part of the mythology and culture of Liverpool, England, where their “Liver Bird” is often shown as a cormorant-like bird. This dates back to at least the fourteenth century, is depicted on the tower of the city’s Royal Liver Building, and is on the seal of the Liverpool Football Club.

20. Gordon D’Arcy, “The Wildlife of the Aran Islands,” in The Book of Aran, ed. John Feehan et al. (Tír Eolas: Newtownlynch, 1994), 63; A. C. Haddon and C. R. Browne, “The Ethnography of the Aran Islands, County Galway,” Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy 2 (1891–93): 810–11. Tom O’Flaherty, Liam’s brother, wrote in 1934 that the last man who used to lower for eggs was still alive but no longer did so. He wrote that the islanders really only ate, because of access and taste, the guillemots. “The cormorant’s flesh was tough, and he was an ill-smelling bird anyhow.” In Tom O’Flaherty, “Coming Home,” in An Aran Reader (Dublin: Lilliput Press, 1991), 178, 183.

21. Synge, Aran Islands, 250–51.

22. J. M. Synge, “Riders to the Sea” and “In the Shadow of the Glen” (London: Methuen & Co., 1961), 94. Apparently Liam O’Flaherty when he got older did not approve of Synge’s work. See Peter Costello, Liam O’Flaherty’s Ireland (Dublin: Wolfhound Press, 1996), 15.

23. Ted Hughes, The Mermaid’s Purse (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1999), 21.

24. Emily Lawless, “The Cormorant,” All Ireland Review 3, no. 25 (August 23, 1902): 389. This poem was originally published in her collection With the Wild Geese in 1902.

25. Editorial comments on Lawless’s “The Cormorant,” in All Ireland Review, 389.

26. Geoffrey Chaucer, “The Parlement of Foules,” in The English Poets, vol. 1, Chaucer to Donne, ed. Thomas H. Ward (New York: Macmillan, 1880), 37.

27. William Turner, Turner on Birds: A Short and Succinct History of the Principal Birds Noticed by Pliny and Aristotle, ed. A. H. Evans (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1903), 207.

28. Olaus Magnus, Description of the Northern Peoples [Historia de Gentibus Septentrionalibus]: Rome 1555, ed. Peter Foote, trans. Peter Fisher and Humphrey Higgens (London: Hakluyt Society, 1998), 3:969.

29. Ibid., 970.

30. Ibid., 1000.

31. Ibid., 969–70.

32. De Ornellas, “‘Fowle Fowles?’” 37–38; OED, 2nd ed., online version, s.v. “cormorant.”

33. Milton, Paradise Lost, 228.

34. OED, 2nd ed., s.v. “cormorous, adj.,” www.oed.com/viewdictionaryentry/Entry/41583

35. OED, 2nd ed., s.v. “cormorancy, n.,” www.oed.com/viewdictionaryentry/Entry/41581.

36. Sidney, “The Last Eclogues” (1590); Sylvester, “The Fifth Day of the First Week” (late 16th to early 17th century); Drayton, “The Twenty-Fifth Song” (1622), Congreve, The Old Batchelour (1693); and Alexander Pope, “The Odyssey” (1725).

37. William Shakespeare, Love’s Labour’s Lost, in The Complete Works, ed. Stanley Wells and Gary Taylor (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1998), 1.1.4, 281.

38. William Shakespeare, The Tragedy of Coriolanus, in The Complete Works, 1.1.119, 1068. See also King Richard II (2.2) and Troilus and Cressida (2.2).

39. See, for example, Barbara K. Lewalski, “Biblical Allusion and Allegory in The Merchant of Venice,” Shakespeare Quarterly 13, no. 3 (Summer 1962): 333.

40. Samuel Taylor Coleridge, “The Devil’s Thoughts,” in The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, ed. Ernest Hartley Coleridge (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1975), 1:321. In case you miss the pun here, “sate” serves to mean both satiate and sat down.

41. Bram Stoker, Dracula (New York: Bantam, 1989), 113.

42. According to local ornithologist Oscar Merne (personal communication, May 10, 12, 2005), formal seabird nest censuses of the Aran Islands didn’t begin until 1969–70, and he has found only European shags breeding there for his several visits over thirty years. Cramp, Bourne, and Saunders (1974) found that only shags nested on the Aran Islands, but Sharrock (1977) recorded great cormorants there, as does D’Arcy in Feehan et al., Book of Aran (1994). A list of birds of the Aran Islands appears in the Gaelic Journal in 1899, listing both cormorant and shag, in both English and Irish.

43. Nelson, Pelicans, Cormorants and Their Relatives, 446–47.

44. For one clear, taxonomical differentiation between cormorants and shags based on morphology and behavior see G. F. van Tets, “Australasia and the Origin of Shags and Cormorants, Phalacrocoracidae,” Proceedings of the 16th International Ornithological Congress (1974): 121.

45. OED, 2nd ed., s.v. “shag, n.,” www.oed.com/view/Entry/177257. There are over ten definitions for “shag” as noun and verb in the OED, and “shagadelic” was added in 1997. “Shag” to mean sex goes back to at least the 1930s. Phrases such as “wet as a shag” or as “miserable as a shag on a rock” appeared as early as the nineteenth century. Another theory about the derivation of shag for the bird suggests that the name comes from the Norse word skegg, meaning a beard, as put forth in Francesca Greenoak, British Birds: Their Folklore, Names and Literature (London: Christopher Helm, 1997), 24. See also Hugh MacDairmid, “Shags’ Nests,” in Stony Limits and Other Poems (London: V. Gollancz, 1934), 88.

46. Meg Bateman, personal communication, January 13, 2005; Andrew Murphy, personal communication, March 25, 2005; Robin Hull, Scottish Birds: Culture and Tradition (Edinburgh: Mercat Press, 2001), 96; Rónadh Cox, personal communication, August 28, 2012; Tomás De Bhaldraithe, ed., English-Irish Dictionary (Dublin: Oifig an tSoláthair, 1959), 151, 301. The cormorant and shag in Irish Gaelic and Scots Gaelic are also both called sgarbh, with some people distinguishing the European shag as sgarbh-an-sgumain. In Scots Gaelic the cormorant can be geòcaire, meaning “glutton.” De Bhaldraithe found the ornithological word for shag in particular to be seaga. See also An Irish-English Dictionary, ed. Edward O’Reilly (Dublin: James Duffy, 1864).

47. Jeremy Bentham, An Introduction to the Principles and Morals of Legislation (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1879), 311.

48. See Judith Washburn, “Objective Narration in Liam O’Flaherty’s Short Stories,” Éire-Ireland 24 (Fall 1989): 120–25.

49. Helene O’Connor, “Liam O’Flaherty: Literary Ecologist,” Éire-Ireland 7, no. 2 (Summer 1972): 47.

50. James M. Cahalan, Liam O’Flaherty: A Study of Short Fiction (Boston: Twayne, 1991), 58. Cahalan was referring to O’Flaherty’s “An Charraid Dhubh” (“The Black Rock”).

51. Nelson, Pelicans, Cormorants and Their Relatives, 443.

52. Scottish ornithologist Jeffrey Graves (personal communications, February 10, March 10, 2005) and Irish ornithologist Oscar Merne (personal communications, May 10, 12, 2005) have doubts and have not witnessed anything like this in cormorants, but neither said it would be impossible. In 1940 F. Goethe records the behavior of birds such as storks, geese, cranes, gulls, and crows attacking an odd, sick, or injured bird of their own species (“Ueber ‘Anstoss-Nehmen’ bei Vögeln,” Zeitshrift fur Tierpsychologie 3, 371–74). Crows and ravens are well known for their mobbing behavior, which has been anecdotally recorded around a sick bird of their own kind. See, for example, “Territory and Mobbing,” CorvidAid, www.corvidaid.org/about-corvids/territory-and-mobbing.

53. Helen O’Connor writes that O’Flaherty is “absorbed by the inexorable ecology of the universe which changes everything in a matter of moments,” in “Liam O’Flaherty: Literary Ecologist,” 53.

54. Liam O’Flaherty, The Black Soul (London: Jonathan Cape, 1936), 89–93.

55. Nelson, Pelicans, Cormorants and Their Relatives, 445.

56. Amy Clampitt, The Kingfisher (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1983), 46. First printed in Atlantic Monthly.

57. Donald J. Borror, Dictionary of Word Roots and Combining Forms (Palo Alto, CA: National Press Books, 1971), 43.

58. Animated version: Oliver Postgate, Peter Firmin, and Smallfilms, Noggin and the Ice Dragon, BBC, c. 1982, www.youtube.com. Book version: Oliver Postgate and Peter Firmin, The Saga of Noggin the Nog, 2: The Ice Dragon (New York: Holiday House, 1968). Quotation is from the animated version. Postgate and Firmin are certainly not out to save the reputations of all black birds. In their story of The Pie, the evil character Nogbad the Bad is surrounded by a flock of his dark crows as he plots dastardly deeds.

59. As cited in Stephen Gregory, The Cormorant (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1986).

60. Ibid.

61. Stephen Gregory, The Cormorant (Clarkston, GA: White Wolf, 1986), 23.

62. Ibid., 26.

63. Ibid., 27.

64. Ibid., 99–100.

65. Peter Markham (director) and Peter Ransley (screenplay), The Cormorant, BBC television, 1993.

66. O’Connor,”Liam O’Flaherty: Literary Ecologist,” 49.

67. Kelly, Liam O’Flaherty the Storyteller, 6.

68. Cahalan, Liam O’Flaherty, 54. I believe “great” is just an adjective here, not a declaration of the species. O’Flaherty wrote in 1930 about showing a filmmaker around: “I shall never forget looking down over a precipice near my native village with [Heinrich] Hauser. It was the scene of one of my short stories, the one I love best.” As cited in Costello, 28.

69. O’Flaherty, Black Soul, 85–86.

4. SOUTH GEORGIA, ANTARCTICA

The epigraph is from Cook’s The Voyages of Captain James Cook (London: William Smith, 1846), 1:570.

1. “Lady Jean Rankin: Obituary,” October 5, 2001, Telegraph, www.telegraph.co.uk.

2. Niall Rankin, Antarctic Isle: Wild Life in South Georgia (London: Collins, 1951), 29.

3. Ibid., 17–25.

4. Robert Cushman Murphy, Oceanic Birds of South America (New York: Macmillan, 1936), 2:871; Johnsgard, Cormorants, Darters, and Pelicans, 261.

5. See, for example, Murphy, Oceanic Birds of South America, 2:878–99; and F. Behn, J. D. Goodall, A. W. Johnson, and R. A. Phillippi, “The Geographic Distribution of the Blue-Eyed Shags, Phalacrocorax albiventer and Phalacrocorax atriceps,” Auk 72 (January 1955): 6.

6. Nelson, Pelicans, Cormorants and Their Relatives, 476.

7. Rankin, Antarctic Isle, 304.

8. S. Wanless, M. P. Harris, and J. A. Morris, “Diving Behaviour and Diet of the Blue-Eyed Shag at South Georgia,” Polar Biology 12 (1992): 713.

9. Nelson, Pelicans, Cormorants and Their Relatives, 498.

10. Rankin, Antarctic Isle, 304.

11. Otto Nordenskjöld and Johan Gunnar Andersson, Antarctica or Two Years amongst the Ice of the South Pole (New York: Macmillan, 1905), 21, 202.

12. W. E. Clarke (1913) as cited in Murphy, Oceanic Birds of South America, 2:889.

13. Rankin, Antarctic Isle, 197–98.

14. These could arguably have been any one of half a dozen or so species.

15. J. C. Beaglehole, ed., The Endeavour Journal of Joseph Banks, 1768–1771 (London: Angus and Robertson, 1963), 1:430.

16. Robert F. Jones, ed., Astorian Adventure: The Journal of Alfred Seton, 1811–1815 (New York: Fordham University Press, 1993), 50–51.

17. E. Lucas Bridges, Uttermost Part of the Earth (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1963), 87. Yaghan Indians are also known as the Yamana, among other names.

18. Ibid., 98. For recent distribution of the cormorants of Tierra del Fuego, see A. C. M. Schiavini, P. Yorio, and E. Frere, “Distribución reproductiva y abundancia de las aves marinas de la Isla Grande de Tierra del Fuego, Isla de los Estados e Islas de Año Nuevo (Provincia de Tierra del Fuego, Antártida e Islas del Atlántico Sur),” in Atlas de la distribucion reproductiva de aves marinas en el litoral Patagonico Argentino, ed. Pablo Yorio et al. (Puerto Madryn: Fundación Patagonia Natural, 1998): 179–213.

19. Bridges, Uttermost Part of the Earth, 98.

20. See “The Selfish Cormorant” and “The Revenge of the Tufted Cormorants,” in Folk Literature of the Yamana Indians, ed. Johannes Wilbert (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1977).

21. Luis Abel Orquera and Ernesto Luis Piana, La vida material y social de los Yamana (Buenos Aires: Universidad de Buenos Aires, 1999), 145.

22. Exhibit, December 30, 2001, Museo del Fin del Mundo, Ushuaia, Argentina; cormorant bones regularly appear in the shell middens of the Beagle Channel dating back to 4500 BCE. See Jordi Estevez, Ernesto Piana, Adrian Schiavini, and Nuria Juan-Muns, “Archaeological Analysis of Shell Middens in the Beagle Channel, Tierra del Fuego Island,” International Journal of Osteoarchaeology 11 (2001): 28. See also Colin McEwan, Luis A. Borrero, and Alfredo Prieto, eds. Patagonia: Natural History, Prehistory and Ethnography at the Uttermost End of the Earth (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1977).

23. R. N. Rudmose Brown, A Naturalist at the Poles: The Life, Work and Voyages of Dr. W. S. Bruce, the Polar Explorer (Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott, 1924), 159.

24. Robert Cushman Murphy, Logbook for Grace (Chicago: Time-Life, 1982), 235. This is not to suggest that all blue-eyed shags are placid. Neil Bernstein told me: “I only made friends with one bird, and she would let me handle her chicks and eggs. I never tried to lift her. The rest of them tore at me as I went to weigh their chicks and eggs.”

25. Robert Cushman Murphy, “Notes on American Subantarctic Cormorants,” Bulletin of the American Museum of Natural History 35 (1916): 47. Biologists sometimes refer to this “throat trembling” as “gular flutter.”

26. L. Harrison Matthews, “The Birds of South Georgia,” in The Discovery Reports, vol. 1 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1929), 584. It seems almost certain that both Rankin and Murphy’s anecdotes about this behavior are directly from Matthews.

27. A. G. Bennett, Whaling in the Antarctic (New York: Henry Holt, 1932), 208. Bennett, I should add, was not one to use exclamation points liberally.

28. Alister Doyle, “Seal Brain and Penguin Breasts off Antarctic Menus,” January 26, 2009, Reuters UK, www.reuters.com.

29. Sanford Moss, Natural History of the Antarctic Peninsula (New York: Columbia University Press, 1988), 109.

30. Nelson, Pelicans, Cormorants and Their Relatives, 481.

31. Ibid., 499.

32. Ibid.; Murphy, Oceanic Birds of South America, 2:886, 890.

33. Rankin, Antarctic Isle, 304.

34. P. Shaw, “Factors Affecting the Breeding Performance of Antarctic Blue-Eyed Shags Phalacrocorax atriceps,” Ornis Scandinavica 17, no. 2 (May 1986): 141; Johnsgard, Cormorants, Darters, and Pelicans, 123. Penguins tend to lay two eggs, one of them a sort of “insurance” egg, as one of the chicks inevitably dies soon after hatching. See Frank B. Gill, Ornithology (New York: W. H. Freeman, 2007), 429.

35. Claire Léger and Raymond McNeil, “Nest Attendance and Care of Young in Double-Crested Cormorants,” Colonial Waterbirds 8, no. 2 (1985): 99; see also Mendall “Home-Life,” 52, on his observing a similar colony in Maine.

36. Neil P. Bernstein and Stephen J. Maxson, “Sexually Distinct Daily Activity Patterns of Blue-Eyed Shags in Antarctica,” Condor 86 (1984): 151.

37. Timothée Cook, personal communication, July 21, 2012. Cook, by contrast, has observed shifts at a variety of different times and duration in blue-eyed cormorants.

38. For cormorant phylogeny see Douglas Siegel-Causey, “Phylogeny of the Phalacrocoracidae,” Condor 90 (1988): 887; and Martyn Kennedy, Carlos Valle, and Hamish G Spencer, “The Phylogenetic Position of the Galápagos Cormorant,” Molecular Phylogenetics and Evolution 53 (2009): 97.

39. Pamela C. Rasmussen and Philip S. Humphrey, “Wing-Spreading in Chilean Blue-Eyed Shags (Phalacrocorax atriceps),” Wilson Bulletin 100, no. 1 (March 1988): 140. Matthews describes cormorants spreading their wings at South Georgia, but this is a rare observation. See Matthews, “Birds of South Georgia,” 1:584.

40. Neil P. Bernstein and Stephen J. Maxson, “Absence of Wing-Spreading Behavior in the Antarctic Blue-Eyed Shag (Phalacrocorax atriceps brandsfieldensis),” Auk 99, no. 3 (July 1982): 588.

41. Ibid.; see also Thor Hanson, Feathers: The Evolution of a Natural Miracle (New York: Basic Books, 2011), 218–21.

42. Neil Bernstein, personal communication, December 15, 2011. See also Timothée R. Cook and Guillaume LeBlanc,”Why Is Wing-Spreading Behaviour Absent in Blue-Eyed Shags?” Animal Behaviour 74 (2007): 650.

43. Y. Tremblay, T. R. Cook, and Y Cherel, “Time Budget and Diving Behaviour of Chick-Rearing Crozet Shags,” Canadian Journal of Zoology 83 (2005): 971.

44. R. Bevan, I. Boyd, P. Butler, K. Reid, A. Woakes, and J. Croxall, “Heart Rates and Abdominal Temperatures of Free-Ranging South Georgian Shags, Phalacrocorax georgianus” Journal of Experimental Biology 200 (1997): 661. Another study of South Georgian shags had one male diving, as a mean, 275 feet (83.9 m). See A. Kato, J. P. Croxall, Y Watanuki, and Y Naito, “Diving Patterns and Performance in Male and Female Blue-Eyed Cormorants Phalacrocorax atriceps at South Georgia,” Marine Ornithology 19 (1992): 117–29. See also R. Casaux, M. Favero, P. Silva, A. Baroni, “Sex Differences in Diving Depths and Diet of Antarctic Shags at the South Shetland Islands,” Journal of Field Ornithology 72, no. 1 (Winter 2001): 22-29; and Timothée R. Cook, Amelie Lescroel, Yann Tremblay, and Charles-Andre Bost, “To Breathe or Not to Breathe? Optimal Breathing, Aerobic Dive Limit and Oxygen Stores in Deep-Diving Blue-Eyed Shags,” Animal Behavior 76 (2008): 565–76.

45. Flavio Quintana, Rory P. Wilson, and Pablo Yorio,”Dive Depth and Plumage Air in Wettable Birds: The Extraordinary Case of the Imperial Cormorant,” Marine Ecology Progress Series 334 (2007): 304; S. Wanless, T. Corfield, M. P. Harris, S. T. Buckland, and J. A. Morris, “ Diving Behaviour of the Shag Phalacrocorax aristotelis (Aves: Pelecaniformes) in Relation to Water Depth and Prey Size,” Journal of Zoology (London) 231 (1993): 15.

46. Timothée Cook, personal communication, July 21, 2012. The biological term for this is’Vegional hypothermia.” See also Bevan, Boyd, Butler, et. al.,”Heart Rates,” 661–74.

47. See, for example, Quintana, Wilson, and Yorio,”Dive Depth,” 304.

48. Timothée Cook, personal communication, July 21, 2012.

49. David Oehler, personal communications, December 9, 2011, and March 30, 2012.

50. See, for example, Elizabeth R. Thomas, Gareth J. Marshall, and Joseph R. Mc-Connell, “A Doubling in Snow Accumulation in the Western Antarctic Peninsula since 1850,” Geophysical Research Letters 35, no. L01076 (2008): 1–5.

51. David Burkitt, personal communication, December 24, 2001.

52. Jo Hardy, personal communication, December 25, 2001.

53. Johnsgard, Cormorants, Darters, and Pelicans, 257. Timothée Cook explains: “The only known case is P. bransfieldensis which is known to do partial latitudinal migrations along the Antarctic peninsula, presumably to stay near waters that are ice-free, thus preventing starvation.” Personal communication, July 21, 2012.

54. Cook, Voyages, 1:570.

55. Ibid., 2:362. (November 7, 1778, south of Unalaska).

56. Ibid., 1:570.

57. John Barrow, Captain Cook: Voyages of Discovery (Chicago: Academy Chicago, 1993), 215. His sailors went ashore at Staten Island and loaded “the Boat with young Shags.” First Lieutenant R. P. Cooper wrote in his own journal: “Today boil’d Shags & Penguins in the Coppers for the Ships Company’s Dinner.” But then two days later in the ship’s log: “The people tired of eating Penguins and Young Shags, they prefer Salt Beef and Pork to either.” See James Cook, The Journals of Captain James Cook on His Voyages of Discovery, vol. 2 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1969), 606, 615–17.

58. S. Wanless and M. P. Harris, “Use of Mutually Exclusive Foraging Areas by Adjacent Colonies of Blue-Eyed Shags (Phalacrocorax atriceps) at South Georgia,” Colonial Waterbirds 16, no. 2 (1993): 176; A similar range has been observed with Crozet Island blue-eyed shags. See Timothée R. Cook, Yves Cherel, and Yann Tremblay, “Foraging Tactics of Chick-Rearing Crozet Shags: Individuals Display Repetitive Activity and Diving Patterns over Time,” Polar Biology 29, no. 7 (2006): 563. Harris reports that the blue-eyed shags of Patagonia (P. atriceps) can range as far as 18 miles (30 km). See Graham Harris, A Guide to the Birds and Mammals of Coastal Patagonia (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1998), 50.

59. Fred G. Alberts, ed., Geographic Names of the Antarctic (Washington, DC: National Science Foundation, 1981), 764. These are believed to be the infamous Aurora Islands.

60. Ibid., 175, 764.

61. F. A. Worsley, Shackleton’s Boat Journey (New York: W. W. Norton, 1998), 140.

62. Ernest Shackleton, South (New York: Signet, 1999), 195.

63. Rankin, Antarctic Isle, 204.

64.Ibid.

65. Ibid., 210.

5. EAST SAND ISLAND, UNITED STATES

The epigraph is from a personal communication with a man who would not give his name, March 13, 2002.

1. East Sand Island currently seems to be just barely the second-largest colony in North America, behind Balabas Island in Manitoba. These two seem far and away the largest across the continent. In the summer of 2012, the Canadian Wildlife Service conducted a count by aerial photograph of Balabas Island, Lake Winnipegosis, counting 13,864 active double-crested cormorant nests. Provided by Scott Wilson, personal communication, September 10, 2012. In the summer of 2011 Bird Research Northwest counted by aerial photography 13,045 active nests. Management on East Sand Island will cause the breeding population to reduce in the following years. See Daniel D. Roby and Ken Collis, principal investigators, “Research, Monitoring, and Evaluation of Avian Predation on Salmonid Smolts in the Lower and Mid-Columbia River: Final 2011 Report,” U.S. Geological Survey—Oregon Cooperative Fish and Wildlife Research Unit and Real Time Research Inc. (August 2012), 43.

2. Megan Gensler, personal communications, August 8, 9, 2011; September 10, 23, 2011.

3. William Clark’s 1805 map of Baker’s Bay does not show East Sand Island.

4. See U.S. Coast Survey, “Mouth of the Columbia River,” 1851 nautical chart, http://historicalcharts.noaa.gov/historicals/preview/image/H00273-oo-oooo. By 1887 it is a sizable elbow and labeled Sand Island. In 1853 James G. Swan describes a shoal in the same location: James G. Swan, The Northwest Coast; or, Three Years’ Residence in Washington Territory (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1857), 100. See also “Columbia River: A Photographic Journey” http://columbiariverimages.com/Regions/Places/sand_island.html (accessed September 3, 2012).

5. See U.S. Coast and Geodetic Survey, “Columbia River Entrance to Harrington Point,” 1913 nautical chart, http://historicalcharts.noaa.gov/historicals/preview/image/6151-00-1913.

6. Excavations of shell middens and remains at sites on the coast just south of the Columbia suggest cormorants were a part of the Native American diet and/or culture as early as 3,500 BCE through until c 1800 CE.

7. George A. Jobaneck and David B. Marshall, “John K. Townsend’s 1836 Report of the Birds of the Lower Columbia River Region, Oregon and Washington,” Northwestern Naturalist 73, no. 1 (Spring 1992): 6, 10. Townsend calls the birds “Black Cormorant (Phalacrocorax carbo),” but this is almost certainly what we know today as the double-crested cormorant.

8. John James Audubon, Ornithological Biography, or an Account of the Habits of the Birds of the United States of America, vol. 5 (Edinburgh: Adam & Charles Black, 1849), 148.

9. Nelson, Pelicans, Cormorants and Their Relatives, 459.

10. See David G. Ainley, Daniel W. Anderson, and Paul R. Kelly,”Feeding Ecology of Marine Cormorants in Southwestern North America,” Condor 83, no. 2 (1981): 120–31.

11. Again, some of the double-crested cormorant classification might be changing, owing in part to genetic analysis. See Mercer, “Phylogeography.”

12. Jessica Y.Adkins and Daniel D. Roby, “A Status Assessment of the Double-Crested Cormorant (Phalacrocorax auritus) in Western North America: 1998–2009,” final report submitted to U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, USGS-Oregon Cooperative Fish and Wildlife Research Unit (March 2010), 35, 44.

13. See Terry McEneaney, “Piscivorous Birds of Yellowstone Lake: Their History, Ecology, and Status,” in Yellowstone Lake: Hotbed of Chaos or Reservoir of Resilience? Conference Proceedings, ed. Roger J. Anderson and David Harmon (Yellowstone, WY: Yellowstone Center for Resources and the George Wright Society, 2002), 121–34.

14. David Thompson’s Narrative of His Explorations in Western America, 1784–1812, ed. J. B. Tyrell (Toronto: Champlain Society, 1916), 459. Thompson writes “fishy tasted” and “it’s.”

15. Adkins and Roby, “Status Assessment,” 18; Adam Peck-Richardson, personal communication, February 19, 2013. See also Karen N Courtot, Daniel D. Roby, Jessica Y Adkins, Donald E. Lyons, D.Tommy King, and R. Scott Larsen,”Colony Connectivity of Pacific Coast Double-Crested Cormorants Based on Post-Breeding Dispersal from the Regions Largest Colony,” Journal of Wildlife Management 76, no. 7 (September 2012): 1462–71.

16. Pelagics in Nelson, Pelicans, Cormorants and Their Relatives (p. 454) summarizing Johnsgard, Cormorants, Darters, and Pelicans of the World (published in 1993): “c. 130,00 adults in N American population,” including all Aleutians; Birds of North America writes data’only crudely known”: Keith A. Hobson,”Pelagic Cormorant (Phalacrocorax pelagicus),” The Birds of North America Online, ed. A. Poole (Ithaca, NY: Cornell Lab of Ornithology, 1997), http://bna.birds.cornell.edu/bna/species/282; red-faced “> c.200,ooo individuals,” (2006): BirdLife International, “Phalacrocorax urile,” 2012, IUCN Red List of Threatened Species, version 2012.2, www.iucnredlist.org.

17. Brandt’s roughly worldwide at 75,000 pairs: Elizabeth A. Wallace and George E. Wallace, “Brandt’s Cormorant (Phalacrocorax penicillatus),” Birds of North America Online, http://bna.birds.cornell.edu/bna/species/362. Double-crested: Daniel Roby, personal communication, May 10, 2012.

18. The number was probably closer to 213,500 pairs on San Martín in 1913. See Wires and Cuthbert, “Historic Populations,” 14. For further information see Harry R. Carter, Arthur L. Sowls, Michael S. Rodway, et al., “Population Size, Trends, and Conservation Problems of the Double-Crested Cormorant on the Pacific Coast of North America,” in Nettleship and Duffy, Double-Crested Cormorant, 202.

19. Eduardo Palacios and Eric Mellink, “Nesting Waterbirds on Islas San Martín and Todos Santos,” Western Birds 31 (2000): 185.

20. For the last fifteen years East Sand Island has hosted an average of 10,000 nesting pairs of cormorants at the peak of summer each year: Bird Research Northwest, “Annual Colony Size (1997–2009).” www.birdresearchnw.org. See earlier note about Balabas Island, Manitoba, which is now likely the largest in all of North America.

21. Wires and Cuthbert, “Historic Populations,” 14.

22. U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, Portland District, “Draft Environmental Assessment: Double-Crested Cormorant Dissuasion Research on East Sand Island in the Columbia River Estuary” (February 2, 2012), 28–29.

23. See, for example, “Grant McOmie: Salmon Killers Flock to Bird Island,” KGW NewsChannel 8 (May 19, 2009), www.kgw.com/archive/59516752.html; sometimes sea lions, harbor seals, and terns are also called “salmon killers.”

24. Megan Gensler, personal communications, August 8, 2011, September 10, 2011, September 23, 2011.

25. Robinson Jeffers, “Birds and Fishes,” in The Wild God of the World: An Anthology of Robinson Jeffers, ed. Albert Gelpi (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2003), 182. First published in The Beginning and the End and Other Poems (1963).

26. U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service/Caspian Tern Management to Reduce Predation of Juvenile Salmonids in the Columbia River, Final Environmental Impact Statement” (Portland, OR, 2005), 3–3.

27. William G. Robbins, “The World of Columbia River Salmon: Nature, Culture, and the Great River of the West,” in The Northwest Salmon Crisis: A Documentary History, ed. Joseph Cone and Sandy Ridlington (Corvallis: Oregon State University Press, 1996), 2.

28. Courtland L. Smith, Salmon Fishers on the Columbia (Corvalis: Oregon State University Press, 1979), 21, 25, 27,

29. Shown on an 1887 map from W. A. Jones, The Salmon Fisheries of the Columbia River, Senate Document 123, Serial Set No. 2510, in Smith, Salmon Fishers, 32. This map does not show East Sand Island,

30. Robbins, “World of Columbia River Salmon,” 11–14,

31. Roy Lowe, personal communication, March 14, 2002; “Chinook Salmon Catch Best in Years,” Curry Coastal Pilot (Brookings, OR), March 13, 2002, 3A,

32. See Matthew Elliott, “Seafood Watch: Pacific Salmon, US. West Coast Region,” Monterey Bay Aquarium (Monterey, May 10, 2011), 1–128.

33. See, for example, William L. Lang and Robert C. Carriker,”A Resurgent Columbia River: An Introduction,” in Great River of the West: Essays on the Columbia River, ed. Williams L. Lang and Robert C. Carriker (Seattle: Washington University Press, 1999), 3–17.

34. As of 2012, thirteen of the twenty salmonid ESUs that spend some time in the Columbia River Basin are listed by the National Marine Fisheries Service as either threatened or endangered. See Northwest Regional Office, “ESA Salmon Listing,” NOAA, National Marine Fisheries Service, www.nwr.noaa.gov/ESA-Salmon-Listings/Index.cfm (accessed August 25, 2012); USFWS,”Caspian Tern Management,” 3–14; Bird Research Northwest, “Overview,” Real Time Research Inc., www.birdresearchnw.org (accessed August 25, 2012).

35. Intermountain Communications, “Mitchell Act Economic Impact: 17 Hatcheries, 70 Million Juveniles, Almost Half the Basin Harvest,” Columbia Basin Bulletin, January 21, 2011, www.cbbulletin.com/404190.aspx.

36. “2013 Pikeminnow Sport Reward Program,” Bonneville Power Administration, www.pikeminnow.org/info.html (accessed February 17, 2013).

37. Bird Research Northwest is a collaboration between Oregon State University, the U.S. Geological Survey–Oregon Cooperative Fish and Wildlife Research Unit out of Corvalis, and Real Time Research out of Bend.

38. Donald Lyons, Daniel Roby, and Ken Collis,”Foraging Patterns of Caspian Terns and Double-Crested Cormorants in the Columbia River Estuary,” Northwest Science 81, no. 2 (2007): 100.

39. USFWS,”Caspian Tern Management,” 1–3; Bird Research Northwest,”East Sand Island,” Real Time Research Inc., www.birdresearchnw.org (accessed August 25, 2012).

40. Daniel Roby, personal communication, May 10, 2012; USFWS, “Caspian Tern Management,” 1–3, 3–5, 4–5; BirdLife International, “Sterna caspia,” 2012, IUCN Red List of Threatened Species, version 2012.1, www.iucnredlist.org.

41. Bird Research Northwest, “Background on the Research and Monitoring of Caspian Terns Nesting in the Columbia River Estuary,” December 30, 2011, Real Time Research Inc., www.birdresearchnw.org/Project-Info/Project-Background/Caspian-Terns/Columbia-River-Estuary-Terns/default.aspx; Don Lyons, personal communication, April 1, 2012.

42. Bird Research Northwest was first called Columbia Bird Research.

43. Thank you to Hugh Powell for putting it this way.

44. Citing Doug Bell: Dan Roby, personal communication, May 10, 2012; Carter, Sowls, Rodway, et al.,”Population Size, Trends,” 198–99.

45. Donald Lyons, “Bioenergetics-Based Predator-Prey Relationships between Piscivorous Birds and Juvenile Salmonids in the Columbia River Estuary” (PhD diss., Oregon State University, 2010), 263–66. See also Lyons, Roby, and Collis, “Foraging Patterns,” 91–103.

46. Cynthia D. Anderson, Daniel D. Roby, and Ken Collis, “Foraging Patterns of Male and Female Double-Crested Cormorants Nesting in the Columbia River Estuary,” Canadian Journal of Zoology 82 (2004): 541.

47. Lyons, Roby, and Collis,”Foraging Patterns,” 100.

48. Daniel Roby, personal communications, May 10, 2012, October 3, 8, 2012; Don Lyons, personal communication, October 4, 2012.

49. Daniel Roby, personal communication, May 10, 2012; Roby and Collis,”Avian Predation on Salmonid Smolts,” 7.

50. Daniel Roby, personal communication, May 10, 2012. Yet Roby adds: “In cases where both wild and hatchery-reared smolts from the same stock are PIT-tagged, hatchery-raised fish are not significantly more susceptible to cormorant predation than their wild counterparts, a surprising result.”

51. For example, from 2000 to 2009, the federal government allocated $804.9 million to the tribes and states of the Pacific Coast, as well as Idaho, through the Pacific Coast Salmon Recovery Fund. See Pacific Coastal Salmon Recovery Fund, “2010 Report to Congress,” NOAA Fisheries Service (2010), 1. For the size of the hatchery operation specifically, see Intermountain Communications, “Mitchell Act Economic Impact.”

52. Range D. Bayer, personal communication, March 14, 2002. All subsequent quotations are from this interview.

53. Range D. Bayer/Cormorant Harassment to Protect Juvenile Salmonids in Tillamook County, Oregon: Studies in Oregon Ornithology, No. 9” (Gahmken Press, 2000), 2.

54. Anonymous Portland man, personal communication, March 13, 2002.

55. The net pen facilities experimented with feeding the smolt under the surface with underwater pipes—to teach the fish to be less vulnerable —but they saw no significant survival gains. Alan Dietrichs, personal communication, October 11, 2012.

56. Anonymous CCEDC Fisheries Project employee, personal communication, March 13, 2002. He is probably thinking of Arctic terns here, who migrate much farther than the Caspian terns.

57. Adam Peck-Richardson, personal communication, September 27, 2011; Army Corps of Engineers, Portland District,”Draft Environmental Assessment,” 21.

58. Anonymous CCEDC Fisheries Project Employee, personal communication, March 13, 2002.

59. Mike Stahlberg, “Three Little Pigs Could Save the Salmon? No Fooling,” Eugene (OR) Register-Guard, April I, 2008, www.highbeam.com/doc/1G1-178644926.html.

60. Adkins and Roby, “Status Assessment,” 8.

61. Ibid.

62. Don Lyons, personal communication, April 1, 2012.

63. Adkins and Roby,”Status Assessment,” 10–11; Carter, Sowls, Rodway, et al.,”Pop-ulation Size, Trends,” 189–215.

64. Bird Research Northwest, “East Sand Island,” www.birdresearchnw.org/Project-Info/Study-Area/Columbia-Basin/East-Sand-Island/default.aspx; Army Corps of Engineers, Portland District,”Draft Environmental Assessment,” 30.

65. Army Corps of Engineers, Portland District,” Draft Environmental Assessment,” 33; American white pelicans are also in the estuary, and they eat salmon upriver, but the birds do not occur in large numbers.

66. Steve Grinley, “Rare Birds Are Objects of Pursuit,” NewburyportNews.com (July 16, 2011), www.newburyportnews.com/local/x967735479/Rare-birds-are-objects -of-pursuit; Lawrence Pyne, “Outdoors:’Bully’ Eagles Keep Cormorant Population in Check,” August 7, 2011, Burlington Free Press.com, www.mychamplain.net/forum/bully-eagles-keep-cormorant-population-check; Jack Knox, “Seagulls on a Bombing Mission over Victoria,” Victoria (BC) Times Colonist, August 14, 2011, www.timescolonist.com/technology/Seagulls+bombing+mission+over+Victoria/5253351/story.html;Tom Banse, “Bald Eagle Comeback Pressures Coastal Seabirds,” Oregon Public Broadcasting News, July 28, 2010, http://news.opb.org/article/bald-eagle-comeback-pressures-coastal-seabirds.

67. For simplicity throughout this book, I do not use the terms “sub-adult” or “immature” but use’juvenile” to mean any bird that is independent of parental care but not yet old enough to breed.

68. Paul Wolf and LeAnn White, “Newcastle Disease Surveillance in Minnesota,” Carrier 4, no. 1 (February 2012): 3.

6. TRING, ENGLAND

The epigraph is from Dawson’s Avian Kingdom, ed. Anna Neher (Berkeley, CA: Heyday Books, 2007), 11.

1. For a more detailed and accurate description of the traditional skinning process, see C.J. O. Harrison and G. S. Cowles, Instructions for Collectors No. 2A: Birds (London: Trustees of the British Museum [Natural History], 1970).

2. C. S. Roselaar, “An Inventory of Major European Bird Collections,” Bulletin of the British Ornithologists’ Club 123A (2003): 291–92; Robert Prŷs-Jones, personal communication, February 16, 2012.

3. Roselaar,”‘Inventory,” 291;”Bird Group,” February 20, 2012, Natural History Museum at Tring, www.nhm.acuk/research-curation/departments/zoology/bird-group/index.html; Robert Prŷs-Jones, personal communication, April 13, 2012.

4. Robert Prŷs-Jones, personal communications, March 22, 2002, and April 13, 15, 2012. All subsequent quotations are from these interviews unless otherwise noted.

5. R. Bowdler Sharpe and W. R. Ogilvie-Grant, Catalogue of the Birds in the British Museum, vol. 26 (London: Order of the Trustees of the British Museum [Natural History], 1898), 405.

6. Nelson, Pelicans, Cormorants and Their Relatives, 595.

7. Ibid., 530; BirdLife International,”Phalacrocorax pygmeus,” 2012, IUCN Red List of Threatened Species, version 2012.1, www.iucnredlist.org.

8. Nelson, Pelicans, Cormorants and Their Relatives, 529.

9. Ibid., 528; Sharpe and Ogilvie-Grant, Catalogue of the Birds, 402–3.

10. Johnsgard, Cormorants, Darters, and Pelicans, vi–vii; Peter Harrison, Seabirds: An Identification Guide, rev. ed. (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1985), 293.

11. Aristotle, Book 8, The History of Animals, trans. DArcy Wentworth Thompson (Cambridge, MA: Internet Classics Archive and Daniel C. Stevenson, 1994–2000), http://classics.mit.edu/Aristotle/history_anim.8.viii.html. See a slightly different translation in Aristotle, History of Animals, Books VII—X, ed. and trans. D. M. Balme (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1991), 105–9.

12. Johnsgard, Cormorants, Darters, and Pelicans, 10–11.

13. Ibid., 6.

14. Van Tets, “Australasia and the Origin of Shags and Cormorants,” 121.

15. See, for example, Kennedy, Valle, and Spencer, “Phylogenetic Position of the Galápagos Cormorant,” 94–98; and Charles G. Sibley and Jon E. Ahlquist, Phylogeny and Classification of Birds: A Study in Molecular Evolution (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1990), 491–503.

16. Jan Hodder, personal communication, March 16, 2002.

17. Nelson, Pelicans, Cormorants and Their Relatives, 4; Sir A. Landsborough Thomson, A New Dictionary of Birds (London: Thomas Nelson, 1964), 535.

18. See a helpful summary of this argument in Hanson, Feathers, or more briefly in Chris Elphick,John B. Dunning Jr., and David Allen Sibley, eds., The Sihley Guide to Bird Life and Behavior (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2009), 40–42.

19. Van Tets, Australasia,” 124. As to the age of cormorants, Nelson writes: “The oldest possible cormorant’ was the related plotopterid [early Miocene, 23 to 15 million years ago]....Undisputed cormorants have been found in the Miocene [23 to 5.3 million years ago].” See Nelson, Pelicans, Cormorants and Their Relatives, 9–10,17.

20. An exception is that tropicbirds have no true gular pouch.

21. Nelson, Pelicans, Cormorants and Their Relatives, 7.

22. See a helpful, updated summary of cormorant phylogeny in Les Christidis and Walter E. Boles, Systematics and Taxonomy of Australian Birds (Collingwood, Victoria: CSIRO, 2008), 49–50. For many cormologists, this is the new go-to taxonomy.

23. Registration Number: 1893.12.31.2, H. O Forbes, 1893. See Sharpe and Ogilvie-Grant, Catalogue of the Birds, 385.

24. Miriam Rothschild, Dear Lord Rothschild: Bird, Butterfly, and History (Philadelphia: Balaban Publishers, 1983), 108–9.

25. Several of the most expert and recent sources cite a further specimen in Dresden, but Steven van der Mije, senior collections manager, the Netherlands Centre for Biodiversity Naturalis, wrote to me on January 2, 2012: “The museum in Dresden can’t find any specimen [of the spectacled cormorant]. Where this information came from is still under investigation. For the moment it is best to assume there are six confirmed specimens.” See “Spectacled Cormorant Phalacrocorax perspicillatus Pallas, 1811,” 2005, National Museum of Natural History Naturalis, Leiden, http://nlbif.eti.uva.nl/naturalis. This website has a three-dimensional photograph of their mounted specimen. For mention of the seventh specimen in Dresden, see James C. Greenway Jr., Extinct and Vanishing Birds of the World, 2nd ed. (New York: Dover, 1967), 160; and Julian P. Hume and Michael Walters, Extinct Birds (London: T & A. D. Poyser, 2012), 76.

26. Graham Satchell (reporter), “Thousands Sign Petition Calling for Cormorant Cull,” February 22, 2012, BBC News, www.bbc.co.uk.

27. The Canal and River Trust (formerly British Waterways) is the organization in charge of the licensing for recreational fishing in the reservoirs. John Ellis, National Fisheries and Angling manager, Canal and River Trust, personal communication, July 30, 2012.

28. The Tring Anglers, NewsLine, Winter 2010–11,1. After several queries, I was unable to get a reply from the club.

29. Mark Cocker and Richard Mabey, Birds Britannica (London: Chatto & Windus, 2005), 36.

30. Robert A. Lambert, “Seabird Control and Fishery Protection in Cornwall, 1900– 1950,” British Birds 96, no. 1 (January 2003): 30, 32.

31.“Licensing Statistics—Fish Eating Birds, 2001–2011,” Natural England, www.naturalengland.org.uk/Images/piscy-stats_tcm6-10263.pdf. For some of the controversy regarding this see, for example, Paul Brown, “Cull ‘will wipe out cormorants’: RSPB Will Go to Court against Minister’s Move to Help Anglers,” Guardian, February 17, 2004, www.guardian.co.uk.

32.“Cormorant Busters,” July 24, 2012, www.cormorantbusters.co.uk.

33. Richard Lee, “These Birds Must Be Killed,” Angling Times, no. 2266, December 4, 1996,1, 8–9. See also Cocker and Mabey, Birds Britannica, 36.

34. See, for example, Kathy Marks and Mathew Brace, “Editor Urged Cormorant Cull,” June 5, 1997, Independent, www.independent.co.uk/news/editor-urged-cormorant-cull-1254212.html.

35. Nelson, Pelicans, Cormorants and Their Relatives, 411–12.

36. Stuart E. Newson, Baz Hughes, Ian C. Russell, Graham R. Ekins, and Robin M. Sellers, “Sub-specific Differentiation and Distribution of Great Cormorants Phalacrocorax carbo in Europe,” Ardea 92, no. 1 (2004): 3; Moran Joint Bird Group/Cormorants: The Facts,” Environment Agency (undated), 1.

37. Angling Trust, “Cormorant Watch,” video, 2011, www.cormorantwatch.org/video.html.

38. Trevor Harrop (contact), “Press Release: Cormorant Campaign Goes to Parliament,” Angling Trust, February 22, 2012, www.anglingtrust.net.

39. James Fisher, The Shell Bird Book (London: Ebury Press, 1966), 24, 28, 30–31, 38; D. W. Yalden and U. Albarella, The History of British Birds (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009) 34–36, 74, 87, 210. The Norfolk coastal deposits are perhaps the oldest record, at approximately 350,000 years old.

40. Matthew Heydon, “Licensing the Shooting of Cormorants to Prevent Serious Damage to Fisheries and Inland Waters,” Natural England–Wildlife Management and Licensing (January 14, 2008), 5. See discussion of population trends and breeding versus wintering in Rhys E. Green, Will J. Peach, and Norman Ratcliffe, “RSPB Comments on CSL’s Revised Cormorant Cull Analysis,” Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (March 31, 2005), 3–4.

41. Sarah Dove, personal communication, September 21, 2012, and March 14, 2013.

42. Vivien Behrens, Felix Rauschmayer, and Heidi Wittmer, “Managing International ‘Problem’ Species: Why Pan-European Cormorant Management Is So Difficult,” Environmental Conservation 35, no. 1 (2008): 59.

43. Environment Directorate General and CorMan, “The EU Cormorant Platform,” February 22,2012, http://ec.europa.eu/environment/nature/cormorants/home_en.htm; Stefano Volponi (webmaster), “Cormorants,” updated July 7, 2012, IUCN Wetlands International Cormorant Research Group, http://cormorants.freehostia.com/index.htm.

44. Wetlands International Cormorant Research Group, “Cormorants in the Western Palearctic” (2008 leaflet), 1–2; Thomas Bregenballe, Stephano Volponi, Mennobart R. van Eerden, et al., “Status of the Breeding Population of Great Cormorants Phalacrocorax carbo in the Western Palearctic in 2006,” Proceedings 7th International Conference on Cormorants 2005 ed. M. R. van Eerden, Stef van Rihn, and V Keller (2011), 8–20; Environment Directorate General and CorMan, “Distribution of the Breeding Population around 2006,” February 22, 2012, http://ec.europa.eu/environment/nature/cormorants/breeding-distribution-2006.htm.”The size of the cormorant population in Europe varies between half a million and one and a half million birds, depending on who provides the data,” in Tilo Arnhold (contact),”Press Release: The Cormorant—the ‘Black Plague’ or an Example of Successful Species Conservation,” Helmholtz Association of German Research Centres, June 4, 2008, 1.

45. Environment Directorate General and CorMan, http://ec.europa.eu/environment/nature/cormorants/breeding-distribution-2006.htm; Bregenballe, Volponi, van Eerden, et al., “Status of the Breeding Population,” 14; Stuart E. Newson, Graham R. Ekins, John H. Marchant, Mark M. Rehfisch, and Robin M. Sellers, “The Status of Inland and Coastal Breeding Great Cormorants Phalacrocorax carbo in England,” BTO Research Report, no. 433 (April 2006), 5,13, 29, 31, 36.

46. Newson, Hughes, Russell, et al., “Sub-specific Differentiation,” 3.

47. Newson, Ekins, Marchant, et al., “Status of Inland and Coastal Breeding Great Cormorants” 9; Bregenballe, Volponi, van Eerden, et al., “Status of the Breeding Population,” 9.

48. Behrens, Rauschmayer, and Wittmer,”Managing International’Problem’ Species,” 56, 58.

7. BERING ISLAND, RUSSIA

The epigraph is from Leonhard Stejneger and Frederic A. Lucas, “Contributions to the Natural History of the Commander Islands,” Proceedings of the United States National Museum 12 (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1890), 83,

1. Andrew Wyeth, Northern Coast (1942), Portland Museum of Art, Maine,

2. Terry Thornsley, Laguna Locals (2008), Crescent Bay Point Park, Laguna Beach, CA; Duncan McKiernan, Cormorants (1980), City Pier at the Feiro Marine Life Center, Port Angeles, WA.

3. Tom Harvey, Cormorant (2008), Cotswold Country Park, Cirencester; Kevin Her-lihy, Cormorant (2008), Chiswick Park, London; Elizabeth Cook, Cormorant, Thorpe Meadows, Peterborough. See also Taking Flight, by Craig Knowles (1997), steel girders and a steel cormorant in Sunderland, also vertical with wing-spread; and Cormorant by Christian Funnell (2000, 2012), seven feet (2 m) tall, standing with wings spread in Newhaven Harbor (see Chris Conil, “Christian Funnell: Cormorant,” August 16, 2012, www.youtube.com/watch ?v=D8oLEZMUIhg). And this is not an exhaustive list.

4. Anna Kirk-Smith, personal communications, January 6, April 13, 2012. All quotations in this chapter are from this correspondence, or from Anna Kirk-Smith, “Easel Words:’The Unfortunate Repercussions of Discovery and Survival,’“Jackdaw 101 (January/February 2012): 21. For images of the sculpture, see www.anna.kirk-smith.com.

5. Victor Zviagin, “The Unknown Vitus Bering,” 2010 International Conference on Russian America (Sitka, AK: August 18–22, 2010), 1–3. See http://2010rac.com/papers.shtml.

6. Georg Wilhelm Steller, Journal of a Voyage with Bering, 1741–1742, trans, and ed. O. W Frost, trans. Margritt A. Engel (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1988), 113.

7. Ibid., 114.

8. Ibid., 120.

9. Ibid.

10. Sven Waxell, The American Expedition (London: William Hodge, 1952), 123.

11. Steller, Journal, 122.

12. Anonymous Englishman, personal communication, March 20, 2002.

13. Steller, Journal, 130.

14. Ibid., 141, 215–16; Zviagin, “Unknown Vitus Bering,” 1–3. See http://2010rac.com/papers.shtml.

15. Steller, Journal, 129. For an image and description of this type of knife see Frank A. Golder, Bering’s Voyages, trans. Leonhard Stejneger, vol. 2 (New York: American Geographical Society, 1925), 47.

16. Leonhard Stejneger, Georg Wilhelm Steller: The Pioneer of Alaskan Natural History (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1936), 368–69,

17. BirdLife International, “Haliaeetus pelagicus” 2012, IUCN Red List of Threatened Species, version 2012.1, www.iucnredlist.org,

18. Steller, Journal, 162. See also Georg Wilhelm Steller, “De Bestis Marinis, or, the Beasts of the Sea (1751),” trans. Walter Miller and Jennie Emerson Miller, ed. and transcriber Paul Royster, Faculty Publications, UNL Libraries 17 (2011).

19. Errol Fuller, Extinct Birds (Ithaca, NY: Comstock Books, 2001), 70; translated as “so that one single bird was sufficient for three starving men” in Stejneger, Georg Wilhelm Steller, 351.

20. Golder, Bering’s Voyages, 237.

21. Fuller, Extinct Birds, 70.

22. This was written by Pallas in Latin and translated in Walter Rothschild, Extinct Birds (London: Hutchinson & Co., 1907), 87. This citation includes: “Female smaller, without crest and spectacles.” This would be unique among cormorants if indeed the female had different plumage and different skin around the eye.

23. Stejneger and Lucas, “Contributions to the Natural History of the Commander Islands,” 84.

24. Nelson, Pelicans, Cormorants and Their Relatives, 590; Stejneger and Lucas/Contributions to the Natural History of the Commander Islands,” 84.

25. Greenway, Extinct and Vanishing Birds, 159.

26. Stejneger, Georg Wilhelm Steller, 351.

27. Steller, Journal, 6, 27–31. This text is probably as faithful an edition of Steller’s journal as possible, working not from Pallas, but from a different copy of the presumed manuscript found by Frank Golder.

28. Stejneger, Georg Wilhelm Steller, 370.

29. BirdLife International, “Table 4a: Red List Category Summary for All Animal Classes and Orders,” 2012, IUCN Red List, version 2012.1, www.iucnredlist.org; Stuart Pimm, Peter Raven, Alan Peterson, Çağan H. Şekercioğlu, and Paul R. Ehrlich, “Human Impacts on the Rates of Recent, Present, and Future Bird Extinctions,” National Academy of Sciences of the USA 103 (July 18, 2006): 10941.

30. BirdLife International,”Corvus hawaiiensis,” “Gallirallus owstoni,” “Mitu mitu,” and “Zenaida graysoni,” 2012, IUCN Red List, version 2012.1, www.iucnredlist.org.

31. BirdLife International, “Table 4a.”

32. See, for example, Stuart H. M. Butchart, Alison J. Stattersfield, Leon A. Ben-nun, et al., “Measuring Global Trends in the Status of Biodiversity: Red List Indices for Birds,” PLoS Biology 2, no. 12 (2004): 2299; and Carl Safina, The Eye of the Albatross (New York: Henry Holt, 2002).

33. BirdLife International, “Phalacrocorax featherstoni,” 2012, IUCN Red List of Threatened Species, version 2012.2, www.iucnredlist.org.

34. Pimm, Raven, Peterson, and Ehrlich, “Human Impacts,” 10941–43.

35. Duke University, “Birds Going Extinct Faster Due to Human Activities,” Science Daily, July 5, 2006, www.sciencedaily.com.

36. The red-faced cormorant (P. urile) and the pelagic cormorant (P. pelagicus) breed on the Komandorski Islands. See Nelson, Pelicans, Cormorants and Their Relatives, 454, 459.

37. Steller wrote, via Pallas: “Of rarer birds not seen on the Siberian coast I have met with a special sea eagle with a white head and tail [and] the white sea raven (Pelec. Bassanus). It is impossible to reach the latter because it only alights singly on the cliffs facing the sea.” In Golder, Bering’s Voyages, 237.

38. Elphick, Dunning, and Sibley, Sibley Guide, 33–34; Gill, Ornithology, 188–90.

39. Elphick, Dunning, and Sibley, Sibley Guide, 34.

40. Ibid.

41. Gill, Ornithology, 185.

42. Nelson, Pelicans, Cormorants and Their Relatives, 160; Craig R. White, Norman Day, Patrick J. Butler, and Graham R. Martin, “Vision and Foraging in Cormorants: More Like Herons Than Hawks?” PloS ONE 7 (July 2007): 1; Gill, Ornithology, 186; Johnsgard, Cormorants, Darters, and Pelicans, 23.

43. For altitude of cormorant flight from 1,000 to 1,100 meters: Nelson, Pelicans, Cormorants and Their Relatives, 166; Brian Dorr, personal communication, July 17, 2012.

44. White, Day, Butler, and Martin, “Vision and Foraging in Cormorants,” 1.

45. See, for example, Yutaka Watanuki, Francis Daunt, Akinori Takhashi, et al., “Microhabitat Use and Prey Capture of a Bottom-Feeding Top Predator, the European Shag, Shown by Camera Loggers,” Marine Ecology Progress Series 356 (2008): 283–93. For more discussion of cormorant vision underwater, see, for example, Tamir Strod, Ido Izhaki, Zeev Arad, and Gadi Katzir, “Prey Detection by Great Cormorant (Phalacrocorax carbo sinensis) in Clear and in Turbid Water,” Journal of Experimental Biology 211 (2008): 866–72.

46. White, Day, Butler, and Martin, “Vision and Foraging in Cormorants,” 3.

47. Stejneger, Georg Wilhelm Steller, 373–74.

48. Steller, Journal, 17, 148.

49. Ibid.

50. See, for example, W. Michael Mathes, The Russian-Mexican Frontier: Mexican Documents regarding the Russian Establishments in California, 1808–1842 (Berkeley, CA: Fort Ross Interpretive Association, 2008), 11.

51. See, for example, William Clark, November 20, 1805, in Frank Bergon, ed., The Journals of Lewis and Clark (New York: Penguin, 1995), 323.

52. Scott O’Dell, Island of the Blue Dolphins (New York: Dell, 1971), 136; this would likely be Brandt’s cormorants (P. penicillatus), based on location and description.

53. The Vatican Museum does not hold this dress now, confirmed by Jan Timbrook, curator of ethnography, Santa Barbara Museum of Natural History, in Jan Timbrook, “The Lone Woman of San Nicolas Island,” www.sbnature.org/research/anthro/chumash/lowom.htm (accessed July 12, 2012).

54. O’Dell, Island of the Blue Dolphins, 156.

55. Alexander Wetmore, “Leonhard Hess Stejneger, 1851–1943: Presented to the Academy at the Autumn Meeting, 1945,” Biographical Memoirs 24 (Washington, DC: National Academy of Sciences): 149; Waldo L. Schmitt, “Leonhard Stejneger,” Society of Systematic Biologists 13, no. 4 (December 1964): 246.

56. Schmitt,”Leonhard Stejneger,” 246.

57. Ibid.

58. Leonhard Stejneger, “Contributions to the History of the Commander Islands: No.1, Notes on the Natural History, Including Descriptions of New Cetaceans,” Proceedings of the United States National Museum 6, no. 5 (1883): 65.

59. Leonhard Stejneger, “Results of Ornithological Explorations in the Commander Islands and in Kamtschatka” Bulletin No. 29 of the United States National Museum 39 (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1885), 180.

60. Douglas Siegel-Causey, Christine Lefevre, and Arkadii B. Savinetskii, “Historical Diversity of Cormorants and Shags from Amchitka Island, Alaska,” Condor 93 (1991): 850. See also an eighteenth-century Russian account by S. P. Krashnaminnikov about the native use of what are believed to be cormorants. This includes an account of catching cormorants with a hook in a fish, and the use of cormorant bladders for net buoys and the use of bones for needle cases. Theed Pearse, Birds of the Early Explorers in the Northern Pacific (Comox, BC: Theed Pearse / Centennial of Canadian Confederation Project, 1968), 55–56.

61. Stejneger and Lucas, “Contributions to the Natural History of the Commander Islands,” 84.

62. Surprisingly, Leonhard Stejneger wrote little about the flightlessness of this cormorant, but a close reading of his work shows that he came to conclude that the spectacled cormorant was “practically flightless.” See Stejneger, Georg Wilhelm Steller, 351, pl. 20.

63. Siegel-Causey, Lefevre, and Savinetskii, “Historical Diversity of Cormorants,” 849.

64. Lucien M. Turner, “Contributions to the Natural History of Alaska” (Washington DC: Government Printing Office, 1886), 7, 130.

65. Siegel-Causey, Lefevre, and Savinetskii, “Historical Diversity of Cormorants,” 843, 846.

66. Richard Brinsley Hinds, ed., Zoology of the Voyage of the H.M.S. Sulphur, vol. 1 (London: Smith and Elder, 1843), 49.

67. See Fuller, Extinct Birds.

68. Stejneger, Georg Wilhelm Steller, 511.

69. Hinds, Zoology of the Voyage of the H.M.S. Sulphur, pl. 32.

70. First printed in Daniel Giraud Elliot, The New and Heretofore Unfigured Species of Birds of North America, vol. 2 (New York: published by the author, 1869), pl. 50.

71. The Keulemans painting is in Walter Rothschild, Extinct Birds (London: Hutchinson & Co., 1907), pl. 39. The silhouette of this painting is the logo for the “Ghosts of Gone Birds” project.

8. GALÁPAGOS ISLANDS, ECUADOR

The epigraph is from William Rodney Allen and Paul Smith, “An Interview with Kurt Vonnegut,” in Conversations with Kurt Vonnegut, ed. William Rodney Allen (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 1999), 292.

1. This entry was on June 26, 1826, in Charles Darwin, “Edinburgh Diary,” ed. and transcribed John van Whye, rev. 2009, Darwin Online, http://darwin-online.org.uk.

2. Richard Keynes, ed., Charles Darwin’s Zoology Notes and Specimen Lists from H.M.S. Beagle (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), xxii, 211.

3. Charles Darwin, Voyage of the Beagle (New York: Penguin, 1989), 272–73.

4. See, for example, Charles Haskins Townsend, “The Galapagos Tortoises in Their Relation to the Whaling Industry: A Study of Old Logbooks,” in Logbook Tales: Mostly about Galapagos Tortoises . . . (New Bedford, MA: Reynolds, 1936).

5. Wilson Heflin, Herman Melville’s Whaling Years, ed. Mary K. Bercaw Edwards and Thomas Farel Heffernan (Nashville, TN: Vanderbilt University Press, 2004), 90–91, 98–99.

6. Great Short Works of Herman Melville, ed. Warner Berthoff (New York: Harper & Row, 1969), 106.

7. See, for example, Charles Haskins Townsend, “The Flightless Cormorant in Captivity,” Auk 46, no. 2 (April 1929): 211.

8. James T. Carlton and Mary K. Bercaw Edwards found this reference of the cormorant in Porter’s account.

9. David Porter, Journal of a Cruise Made to the Pacific Ocean (New York: Wiley & Halsted, 1822), 1:136. He catches the cormorants a second time along with penguins and other birds and animals near a northern cavern of Isabela.

10. J. A. A., “Rothschild and Hartert’s ‘Review of the Ornithology of the Galapagos Islands,’” Auk 17, no. 3 (July 1900): 301.

11. R. Bowdler Sharpe, ed., “The Hon. Walter Rothschild Sent . . .” Bulletin of the British Ornithologists’ Club 7, no. 54 (May 25, 1898): 52.

12.. Ibid.

13. Joseph R. Slevin, “Log of the Schooner ‘Academy’ on a Voyage of Scientific Research to the Galapagos Islands 1905–1906,” Occasional Papers of the California Academy of Sciences 17 (San Francisco: California Academy of Sciences, 1931), 102.

14. William Beebe, Galápagos: World’s End (New York, Dover: 1951), 170. This is on Isabela.

15. Ibid., 178.

16. Ibid., 176.

17.“Flightless Birds in Cargo for Zoo,” New York Times, May 17, 1923, 14.

18. Townsend, “Flightless Cormorant in Captivity,” 211.

19.“Vanderbilt Back with Sea Trophies,” New York Times, May 17, 1928, 9.

20.“Again the Galapagos,” New York Times, April 25, 1930, 17.

21. M. H. Jackson, Galápagos: A Natural History Guide (Calgary: Calgary University Press, 1985), 6, 230–31. See also “Who We Are,” Charles Darwin Foundation, www.darwinfoundation.org (accessed July 31, 2012),

22. “Statistics of Visitors to the Galapagos,” 2012, Parque Nacional Galápagos, www.galapagospark.org; “Ingreso de visitantes,” Al día con la Dirección del Parque Nacional Galápagos, no. 12 (November/December 2011): 6.

23. Kurt Vonnegut, Galápagos (New York: Laurel, 1988), 90–91.

24. Ibid., 33–34. In this full quotation, the narrator doesn’t recognize, or isn’t aware, that all other cormorant species swim under the surface to catch fish. I forgive Vonnegut.

25. Hank Nuwer, “A Skull Session with Kurt Vonnegut,” in Conversations with Kurt Vonnegut, ed. William Rodney Allen (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 1999), 252.

26. Stephen Jay Gould, Wonderful Life: The Burgess Shale and the Nature of History (New York, W. W. Norton, 1990), 286.

27. Kurt Vonnegut, Fates Worse Than Death: An Autobiographical Collage of the 1980s (New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1991), 15.

28. Gould, Wonderful Life, 286. See also Daniel Cordle, “Changing of the Old Guard: Time Travel and Literary Technique in the Work of Kurt Vonnegut,” Yearbook of English Studies 30 (2000): 166–76.

29. Murphy, Oceanic Birds of South America, 2:870. Douglas Siegel-Causey crafted a taxonomy of cormorants based on skeletal features. He traced the relationship of the flightless cormorant as most closely in the Pacific to that of the extinct spectacled as well as the Brandt’s cormorant (P. penicillatus). See Siegel-Causey, “Phylogeny of the Phalacrocoracidae,” 887.

30. Kennedy, Valle, and Spencer, “Phylogenetic Position of the Galápagos Cormorant,” 96.

31. Ibid., 97.

32.Richard Dawkins, The Greatest Show on Earth: The Evidence for Evolution (New York: Free Press, 2009), 345; Richard Dawkins, “Vestigial Organs: Wings of the Flightless Cormorant,” May 5, 2010, Richard Dawkins Foundation, www.youtube.com/user/richarddawkinsdotnet.

33. Brian K. McNab, “Energy Conservation and the Evolution of Flightlessness in Birds,” American Naturalist 144, no. 4 (October 1994): 629.

34.Ibid.

35. BirdLife International, “Phalacrocorax harrisi,” 2012, IUCN Red List of Threatened Species, version 2012.1, www.iucnredlist.org. This species was listed as endangered from 2000 through 2010.

36. “Census of Native and Endemic Bird Populations of the Galápagos,” February 23, 2010, Parque Nacional Galápagos, www.galapagospark.org. Last census was 2008, recording a total of 1, 321 individual flightless cormorants.

37. Carlos Valle, personal communication, April 24, 2012; Daniel K. Rosenberg Carlos A. Valle, Malcolm C. Coulter, and Sylvia A. Harcourt, “Monitoring Galapagos Penguins and Flightless Cormorants in the Galapagos Islands,” Wilson Bulletin 102, no. 3 (September 1990): 530.

38. David Day, The Doomsday Book of Animals (New York: John Wiley & Sons Canada, 1981), 13.

39. Olson, however, has argued convincingly: “The span of time needed to evolve flightlessness in rails can probably be measured in generations rather than in millennia.” See Storrs L. Olson, “Evolution of the Rails of the South Atlantic Islands,” Smithsonian Contributions to Zoology 152 (1973): 34.

40. See some assessments of current threats to flightless cormorants in Matthias Wolff and Mark Gardener, eds., Proceedings of the Galápagos Science Symposium 2009 (Galápagos: Charles Darwin Foundation, 2009), 87, 106, etc. See also Carlos A. Valle, “The Flightless Cormorant: The Evolution of Female Rule,” in Galápagos: Preserving Darwin’s Legacy, ed. Tui De Roy (Buffalo, NY: Firefly Books, 2009), 169.

41. Peter Weir (director and screenwriter), Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World, Twentieth Century Fox (2003). Quotations transcribed from the film. See also Patrick O’Brian, The Far Side of the World (New York: W. W. Norton, 1984).

42. Heather Carr, personal communication, December 5, 2012.

43. Rory P. Wilson, F. Hernán Vargas, Antje Steinfurth, Philip Riordan, Yan Ropert-Coudert, and David W. Macdonald, “What Grounds Some Birds for Life? Movement and Diving in the Sexually Dimorphic Galápagos Cormorant,” Ecological Monographs 78, no. 4 (2008): 633.

44. Ibid.

45. Carlos Valle, personal communication, April 24, 2012; Nelson, Pelicans, Cormorants and Their Relatives, 533.

46. Flightless cormorant weight: Nelson, Pelicans, Cormorants and Their Relatives, 595. Spectacled cormorant weight: Johnsgard, Cormorants, Darters, and Pelicans, 171.

47. Wilson, Vargas, Steinfurth, et al., “What Grounds Some Birds for Life?” 633; Timothée Cook, personal communication, October 30, 2012; see Bernhard Rensch, Evolution above the Species Level (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1960).

48. M. P. Harris, “Population Dynamics of the Flightless Cormorant Nannopterum harrist,” Ibis 121, no. 2 (1979): 145. Carlos Valle sees this as a form of “group selection,” but he tells me that not too many other biologists support this. Murphy in Oceanic Birds of South America, 2:871–72, wrote that a study of great cormorants in Amsterdam in the 1920s saw females “take the initiative in expression of courtship mannerisms about the time that both sexes assume the details of pre-nuptial plumage.”

49. Valle, “Flightless Cormorant,” 168.

50. Ibid., 167.

51. Ibid., 164.

52. Ibid., 166. It is rare, according to Valle, that there is a brood of two chicks. If so, the female will postpone desertion (Carlos Valle, personal communication, April 24, 2012).

53. Nelson, Pelicans, Cormorants and Their Relatives, 174–75.

54. Snow believed that the courtship dance began in the water, but Valle has observed activities beforehand on shore. Mendall reported this behavior in double-crested cormorants, as did Audubon of double-crested in Florida, but no one since has corroborated this, as far as I am aware.

55. Johnsgard, Cormorants, Darters, and Pelicans, 406.

56. Charles J. Shields, And So It Goes: Kurt Vonnegut, A Life (New York: Henry Holt, 2011), 369.

57. Lorrie Moore, “How Humans Got Flippers and Beaks,” New York Times, October 6, 1985, www.nytimes.com/1985/10/06/books/how-humans-got-flippers-and-beaks.html,

58. Ibid.

59. Barbara K. Snow, “Observations on the Behaviour and Ecology of the Flightless Cormorant Nannopterum harrisi,” Ibis 108, no. 2 (April 1966): 267.

9. BELZONI, UNITED STATES

The epigraph is from David Bird’s The Bird Almanac (Buffalo, NY: Firefly Books, 1999), 280.

1. Chris Nerrin, personal communication, February 27, 2012.

2. Research has substantiated this. Glahn and King write: “Almost 70% of all catfish consumed were stocker-size catfish ranging from 10 to 20 cm (ca. 4 to 8 inches).” See James F. Glahn and D. Tommy King, “Bird Depredation,” in Biology and Culture of Channel Catfish, ed. C. S. Tucker and J. A. Hargreaves (Amsterdam: Elsevier B.V., 2004), 506.

3. “Sight and Motion,” 2008, Reed-Joseph International Co., www.reedjoseph.com; unnamed receptionist at Reed-Joseph, personal communication, April 5, 2012; For a study of this effigy’s effectiveness see Allen R. Stickley Jr. and Junior O. King, “Long-Term Trial of an Inflatable Effigy Scare Device for Repelling Cormorants from Catfish Ponds,” Proceedings of the Eastern Wildlife Damage Control Conference 6 (1995): 89–92.

4. Jim Steeby, personal communications, February 27–29, 2012. All following quotations are from these days of interviews unless otherwise noted.

5. David J. Harvey (contact), “Aquaculture Background,” June 2, 2009, USDA Economic Research Service, www.ers.usda.gov/Briefing/Aquaculture/background.htm; Aquaculture: 1998 statistics,” 2009, Catfish Institute, www.uscatfish.com/aquaculture.html; 2007 US Aquaculture Statistics: USDA, “Quick Stats,” 2007, USDA Census of Agriculture, quickstats.nass.usda.gov; Gail Keirn, USDA-APHIS, personal communication, September 10, 2012; Jimmy Avery, personal communication, September 28, 2012.

6. Terrill R. Hanson, “Catfish Farming in Mississippi,” Mississippi History Now, Mississippi Historical Society (April 2006), mshistory.k12.ms.us.

7. Monterey Bay Aquarium Foundation, “Catfish, U.S. Farmed,” 2012, Monterey Bay Aquarium Seafood Watch, www.montereybayaquarium.org.

8. “Commercial Catfish Production,” February 15, 2012, Mississippi Agricultural and Forestry Experiment Station and Mississippi State University Extension Service, http://msucares.com/aquaculture/catfish/index.html; National Agriculture and Statistics Service, “Catfish Production” (Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Agriculture, 2004), 11, 16.

9. “Commercial Catfish Production.”

10. Monterey Bay Aquarium Foundation, “Catfish,” www.montereybayaquarium.org; Hanson, “Catfish Farming in Mississippi,” mshistory.k12.ms.us.

11. Jim Steeby, personal communication, April 5, 2012. William Tackett died in August 2012 at the age of eighty-seven.

12. Audubon, Ornithological Biography, vol. 3 (1835), 387.

13. “Mississippi River Journal,” in John James Audubon: Writings and Drawings, ed. Christoph Irmscher (New York: Library of America, 1999), 6, 65.

14. Ibid., 58; Italics here represent Audubon’s underlining.

15. Audubon, Ornithological Biography, vol. 4 (1838), 145.

16. Ibid., 139.

17. Audubon, Ornithological Biography, 3:389.

18. Malcolm Margolin, The Ohlone Way: Indian Life in the San Francisco–Monterey Bay Area (Berkeley, CA: Heyday Books, 1978), 37, 54, 95.

19. Audubon, Ornithological Biography, 3:393.

20. Ibid., 423.

21. Oliver Luther Austin Jr., The Birds of Newfoundland Labrador, Memoirs of the Nuttall Ornithological Club 7 (Cambridge, MA: Nuttall Ornithological Club, 1932), 33.

22. See, for example, Kathryn Blaze Carlson, “New York Solves Its Canada Goose Problem by Serving Them to Pennsylvania’s Poor,” National Post, August 25, 2011, www.news.nationalpost.com; U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, “Geese Management,” April 11, 2012, Migratory Bird Program, www.fws.gov/migratorybirds/RegulationsPolicies/geese.html.

23. Larry Brown, personal communication, February 28, 2012.

24. This cormorant first landed aboard the SSV Westward on January 31, 2002, 1730 EST, 24°11.7” N x 83°I7.9” W.

25. Biologists differentiate a fifth double-crested cormorant subspecies (P. a. heuretus) living in the Bahamas and Cuba all year round.

26. Francesco Tarducci, The Life of Christopher Columbus, trans. Henry F. Brownson, vol. 1 (Detroit: H. F. Brownson, 1891), 327; Samuel Eliot Morison, Admiral of the Ocean Sea: A Life of Christopher Columbus, vol. 2 (Boston: Little, Brown, 1942), 150.

27. Audubon, Ornithological Biography, 3:387.

28. Guillaumet, Dorr, Wang, et al., “Determinants of Local and Migratory Movements,” 1097; Hatch and Weseloh,”Double-Crested Cormorant,” 5.

29. Elphick, Dunning, and Sibley, Sibley Guide, 64–65. See also Paul Kerlinger, How Birds Migrate, 2nd ed. (Mechanicsburg, PA: Stackpole Books, 2009), 148–64.

30. See, for example, USFWS, “Final Environmental Impact Statement: Double-Crested Cormorant Management in the United States,” 121–22; and Guillaumet, Dorr, Wang, et al.,” Determinants of Local and Migratory Movements,” 1097.

31. D. Tommy King, Bradley F. Blackwell, Brian S. Dorr, and Jerrold L. Belant, “Effects of Aquaculture on Migration and Movement Patterns of Double-Crested Cormorants,” Human-Wildlife Conflicts 4, no. 1 (Spring 2010): 77; J. F. Glahn, D. S. Reinhold, and C. A. Sloan, “Recent Population Trends of Double-Crested Cormorants Wintering in the Delta Region of Mississippi: Responses to Roost Dispersal and Removal under a Recent Depredation Order” Waterbirds 23, no. 1 (2000): 38.

32. Glahn and King, “Bird Depredation,” 505. USDA-APHIS did not have more recent estimates at time of publication,

33. Ibid. This 9.5 percent of all North American double-crested cormorants comes from the 1–2 million estimate often used and Glahn and King’s total of 127,000 in the late 1990s. Thus between 6.35 percent and 12.7 percent is 9.5 percent. Gail Keirn of USDA-APHIS pointed out to me that, by the nature of the “snapshot” wintering counts, this estimate is probably less than how many are actually there. Personal communication, September 10, 2012. In other words, she thinks more than one of ten of all double-crested cormorants came through each winter.

34. Jackson and Jackson, “Double-Crested Cormorant,” 125–26. It is not a universally accepted conclusion, however, that the catfish farms directly increased the Interior population of cormorants. Brian Dorr explained to me: “I think cormorants do benefit from passing through aquaculture areas, such as by building higher fat reserves, but I’m not sure (and likely no one is) that it’s a major driver of population increase.” Personal communication, July 5, 2012.

35. Gail Keirn, USDA-APHIS, personal communication, September 10, 2012.

36. Living with Wildlife: Cormorants, USDA Wildlife Services (pamphlet, n.d.), 3.

37. You can download the activity sheet online. See www.aphis.usda.gov/wildlife_damage/nwrc/publications/living/cormorants.pdf.

38. King, Blackwell, Dorr, and Belant, “Effects of Aquaculture,” 80.

39. Gail Keirn, USDA-APHIS, personal communication, September 10, 2012.

40. King, Blackwell, Dorr, and Belant, “Effects of Aquaculture,” 84.

41. Guillaumet, Dorr, Wang, et al., “Determinants of Local and Migratory Movements, 1097–1098.

42. Ibid., 1102.

43. Glahn and King, “Bird Depredation,” 505.

44. Wires and Cuthbert,” Historic Populations,” 26.

45. Brian Dorr, personal communication, February 19, 2013. Dorr points out that management might be part of why nesting has not increased.

46. Jackson and Jackson, “Double-Crested Cormorant,” 118; Living with Wildlife: Cormorants, USDA Wildlife Services (pamphlet, n.d.), 3. See also Mark Twain, Life on the Mississippi, ed. James R. Osgood (New York: Penguin, 1986), 417.

47. Berlin Heck, personal communication, c. June 2009.

48. Louisiana license for resident hunter, issued August 28, 1958, Louisiana Wildlife and Fisheries Commission.

49. D. N. Carss, ed. “Reducing the Conflict between Cormorants and Fisheries on a Pan-European Scale, Final Report: Summary,” REDCAFE (Arberdeenshire: Natural Environment Research Council Centre for Ecology and Hydrology, 2003), 3.

50. See Takaharu Natsumeda, Tetsuya Tsuruta, Kayoko Kameda, and Kei’ichiro Iguchi, “Winter Feeding of the Common Cormorant (Phalacrocorax carbo hanedae) in a Temperate River System in Japan,” Journal of Freshwater Ecology 25, no. 1 (2010): 41–48; Tetsumi Takahashi, Kayoko Kameda, Megumi Kawamura, and Tsuneo Nakajima, “Food Habits of Great Cormorant Phalacrocorax carbo hanedae at Lake Biwa, Japan, with Special Reference to Ayu Plecoglossus altivelis altivelis,” Fisheries Science 72, no. 3 (2006): 477–84.

51. See, for example, “NSW Land Based Sustainable Aquaculture Strategy,” Industry and Investment New South Wales (December 2009), 1–113.

52. Nelson, Pelicans, Cormorants and Their Relatives, 530.

53. S. C. Nemtzov, “Relocation of Pygmy Cormorants Phalacrocorax pygmeus Using Scare Tactics to Reduce Conflict with Fish Farmers in the Bet She’an Valley, Israel,” Conservation Evidence 2 (2005): 3.

54. Meredith Price, “Big Fish in a Small Pond,” Jerusalem Post, May 20, 2005, www.jpost.com/Cooperations/Archives; Nemtzov, “Relocation of Pygmy Cormorants,” 3.

55. Nemtzov, “Relocation of Pygmy Cormorants,” 4.

56. Price, “Big Fish in a Small Pond.”

57. Larry Brown, personal communication, February 28, 2012.

58. Glahn and King, “Bird Depredation,” 506.

59. Ibid., 508.

60. Brian S. Dorr, Loren W. Burger, Scott C. Barras, and Kristina C. Godwin, “Economic Impact of Double-Crested Cormorant, Phalacrocorax auritus, Depredation on Channel Catfish, Ictalurus punctatus, Aquaculture in Mississippi, USA,” Journal of the World Aquaculture Society 43, no. 4 (2012): 502.

61. Glahn and King, “Bird Depredation,” 506.

62. Ibid., 507.

63. See Cynthia M. Doffitt, Linda M. Pote, and D. Tommy King, “Experimental Bolbophorus damnificus (Digenea: Bolbophoridae) Infections in Piscivorous Birds,” Journal of Wildlife Diseases 45, no. 3 (2009): 684–91.

64. The Wildlife Service roost dispersal program is based on this concept, hoping to push cormorants closer to the river, where they feed less on farm-raised fish. Glahn and King, “Bird Depredation,” 506. See also Dorr, Burger, Barras, and Godwin, “Economic Impact of Double-Crested Cormorant,” 502–13; and Brian S. Dorr, Loren W Burger, Scott C. Barras, and Kristina C. Godwin,”Double-Crested Cormorant Distribution on Catfish Aquaculture in the Yazoo River Basin of Mississippi,” Wildlife Society Bulletin 36, no. 1 (2012): 70–77.

65. Glahn, Reinhold, and Sloan, “Recent Population Trends,” 38, 40.

66. Brady Thompson, personal communication, February 28, 2012.

10. ISLA CHINCHA CENTRO, PERU

The epigraph is from Murphy’s Bird Islands of Peru (New York: G. P. Putnam, 1925), 72–73.

1. In 2008 PROABONOS was absorbed by a larger organization of all national agricultural programs, titled AGRORURAL, which is derived from “Programa de Desarrollo Productivo Agrario Rural.” This translates roughly to the Rural Agricultural Productivity Development Program,

2. Elisa Goya, personal communication, September 19, 2012; Simon Romero, “Peru Guards Its Guano as Demand Soars Again,” New York Times, May 30, 2008, AIO.

3. J. Jahncke, D. M. Checkley Jr., and G. L. Hunt Jr., “Trends in Carbon Flux to Sea-birds in the Peruvian Upwelling System: Effects of Wind and Fisheries on Population Regulation,” Fisheries Oceanography 13, no. 3 (2004): 209.

4. The Peruvian booby might have once or twice been more populous on the coast than the cormorant. Today they occur in about equal numbers. See Robert E. Coker, “The Protection of Birds Made Profitable,” Science 82, no. 2114 (July 5, 1935): 11; Henri Weimerskirch, Sophie Bertrand, Jaime Silva, Jose Carlos Marques, and Elisa Goya, “Use of Social Information in Seabirds: Compass Rafts Indicate the Heading of Food Patches,” PLoS ONE 5, no. 3 (2010): 2.

5. Nelson, Pelicans, Cormorants and Their Relatives, 467.

6. Ibid.

7. As published in Murphy, Bird Islands of Peru, 81. Isla Chincha Sur hosted more than one million cormorants, including adults and chicks earlier in the twentieth century: Robert E. Coker, “Regarding the Future of the Guano Industry and the Guano-Producing Birds of Peru,” Science 28, no. 706 (July 10, 1908): 64.

8. Murphy, Bird Islands of Peru, 81. Research suggests that on average guanay cormorants consume about 17.5 percent of their body weight in food per day, and they weigh 1.8 kg each, thus .31 kg/day x 5 million = 1,550,000 kg (1,708.6 tons), so Forbes’s number of 1,000 tons is possible, even likely, if his number of birds was correct. Consumption data from Jahncke, Checkley, and Hunt, “Trends in Carbon Flux,” 215.

9. Murphy, Bird Islands of Peru, 74–75.

10. First published in Arte de pájaros (1966). Translation by Jack Schmitt in Pablo Neruda, The Poetry of Pablo Neruda, ed. Ilan Stavans (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2003), 751–52.

11. OED, 2nd ed., s.v. “guano, n.,” www.oed.com/view/Entry/82113.

12. Garth Bawden, The Moche (Cambridge, MA: Blackwell, 1996), 73.

13. Jimmy M. Skaggs, The Great Guano Rush: Entrepeneurs and American Overseas Expansion (New York: St. Martin’s Griffin, 1995), 4.

14. James W. Reid, Textile Masterpieces of Ancient Peru (New York: Dover, 1986), 7.

15. David C. Duffy, “The Guano Islands of Peru: The Once and Future Management of a Renewable Resource,” Birdlife Conservation Series 1 (1994): 70; Skaggs, Great Guano Rush, 4; William M. Denevan, Cultivated Landscapes of Native Amazonia and the Andes (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), 35.

16. Robert E. Coker, “Peru’s Wealth-Producing Birds,” National Geographic, June 1920, 541; Victor Wolfgang von Hagen, South America Called Them: Explorations of the Great Naturalists (New York: Duell, Sloan, and Pearce, 1955), 154; Denevan, Cultivated Landscapes, 35. Some of the Incan use and culture surrounding guano has been questioned; see Vogt as cited in Duffy, “Guano Islands of Peru.”

17. See, for example, Reid, Textile Masterpieces of Ancient Peru; Jiirgen Golte, Los dioses de Sipán (Lima: IEP Ediciones, 1993); and Hope B. Werness, The Continuum Encyclopedia of Animal Symbolism in Art (New York: Continuum International, 2006),

18. Golte, Los dioses de Sipán, 72–74,

19. Cuthbert W. Johnson, “On Guano,” Farmer’s Magazine 7, no. 3 (March 1843): 171.

20. George Shelvocke, A Voyage Round the World by the Way of the Great South Sea (London: Senex, 1726), 270–71.1 have added here the apostrophe in “birds’ feathers.”

21. Von Hagen, South America Called Them, 154; Skaggs, Great Guano Rush, 4.

22. Skaggs, Great Guano Rush, 11.

23. David Hollett, More Precious Than Gold: The Story of the Peruvian Guano Trade (Madison, NJ: Farleigh Dickinson University Press, 2008), 85–86; see also Skaggs, Great Guano Rush, 5.

24. For example, Johnson, “On Guano,” 171.

25. Gregory T. Cushman, “‘The Most Valuable Birds in the Word’: International Conservation Science and the Revival of Peru’s Guano Industry, 1909–1965,” Environmental History 10, no. 3 (July 2005): 478.

26. John Peter Olinger, “The Guano Age in Peru,”History Today 30 (June 1980): 15.

27. Skaggs, Great Guano Rush, 14.

28. Ibid., 39–42.

29. G.W.P. [George Washington Peck], “From the Chincha Islands,” New York Times, January 7, 1854, 2. Correspondence was dated November 10, 1853. Peck wrote of six acres covered densely with guano birds.

30. Nelson Crowell, journal entry January 1853, Log 850, Mystic Seaport Museum, Mystic, CT.

31. Ibid.

32. Ibid.

33. Crowell, journal entry, August 18, 1856.

34. Ibid., September 6, 1856. In this entry Crowell underlined where I have used italics.

35. Simeon G. Fish, journal entries, March 14, June 7, 1857, Log 893, Mystic Seaport Museum, Mystic, CT.

36. Ibid., April 4, 1857.

37. Ibid., May 29, 1857; Sargent also describes a body being interred in guano: see Henry Jackson Sargent Jr., The Captain of the Phantom: The Story of Henry Jackson Sargent, Jr. 1834–1862 (Mystic, CT: Mystic Seaport, 1967), 26.

38. Fish, journal entry, June 6, 1857.

39. Octavius T. Howe and Frederick C. Matthews, American Clipper Ships, 1833–1858 (New York: Dover, 1986), 1:253–59.

40. Basil Lubbock, The Down Lasters: American Deep-Water Sailing Ships, 1869–1929 (New York: Dover, 1987), 53.

41. Skaggs, Great Guano Rush, 155.

42. “Spontaneous Combustion of Guano,” Chemist 3, no. 26 (February 1845): 78.

43. See, for example, a c. 1860 advertising poster for Soluble Pacific Guano that features a cormorant, although a rather penguin-looking one. Held by Mystic Seaport Museum (1952.1046), Mystic, CT.

44. Nelson writes that the Socotra and Cape cormorants also have “aerial scanners” that enter the water from the air. See Nelson, Pelicans, Cormorants and Their Relatives, 430.

45. Murphy, Bird Islands of Peru, 78–79.

46. Nelson, Pelicans, Cormorants and Their Relatives, 468.

47. Murphy, Bird Islands of Peru, 85.

48. Herman Melville, Moby-Dick, ed. Harrison Hayford, Hershel Parker, G. Thomas Tanselle (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 2001), 63.

49. See, among others: Nelson, Pelicans, Cormorants and Their Relatives, 466 [330 ft / 100 m]; Murphy, Bird Islands of Peru, 104 [up to 150 ft / 46 m]; Skaggs, Great Guano Rush, 4, 160 [60–100 ft or more / 18–30 m].

50. Crowell, journal entry, January 1853.

51. Ibid.

52. Ibid.

53. Sargent, Captain of the Phantom, 34.

54. This vessel was 210 feet (64 m) long and 43 feet (13 m) at the beam.

55. Lawrence Clayton, “Chinese Indentured Labour in Peru,” History Today 30 (June 1980): 21.

56. Ibid.

57. Gaddis Smith, “The Agricultural Roots of Maritime History,” American Neptune 44, no. 1 (Winter 1984): 9.

58. Skaggs, Great Guano Rush, 163. Skaggs estimates that by 1875 between eighteen thousand and thirty thousand Chinese men went to the Chincha Islands to mine guano.

59. Ibid., 159; Clayton,”Chinese Indentured Labour in Peru,” 22.

60. Robert E. Coker, “Habits and Economic Relations of the Guano Birds of Peru,” Proceedings of the United States National Museum, 56, no. 2298 (1920): 509; Duffy, “Guano Islands of Peru,” 70.

61. Clayton, “Chinese Indentured Labour in Peru,” 22; W. M. Mathew, “A Primitive Export Sector: Guano Production in Mid-Nineteenth-Century Peru,” Journal of Latin American Studies 9, no. 1 (May 1977): 54.

62. Mathew, “Primitive Export Sector,” 44.

63. Skaggs, Great Guano Rush, 161.

64. See, for example, G.W.P. [George Washington Peck],”From the Chincha Islands.” 2. Correspondence was dated November 10, 1853; and Murphy, Bird Islands of Peru, 124–25.

65. George W. Peck, Melbourne, and the Chincha Islands; with Sketches of Lima and a Voyage Round the World (New York: Scribner, 1854), 206, 212.

66. Ibid., 208.

67. Boston Traveler, “Interesting from the Chincha Islands,” American Farmer 6, no. 4 (June 1, 1854): 86.

68. Raphael Semmes, My Adventures Afloat: A Personal Memoir of My Cruises and Services in “The Sumter” and “Alabama” (London: Richard Bentley, 1869), 579.

69. Henry F. Dobyns and Paul L. Doughty, Peru: A Cultural History (New York: Oxford University Press, 1976), 178–79.

70. dinger, “Guano Age in Peru,” 16.

71. Murphy, Bird Islands of Peru, 104.

72. Cushman, “‘Most Valuable Birds,’” 479.

73. Duffy, “Guano Islands of Peru,” 70–71; Cushman, “‘Most Valuable Birds,’” 490.

74. Duffy, “Guano Islands of Peru,” 71; Cushman, “‘Most Valuable Birds,’“ 486.

75. Duffy, “Guano Islands of Peru,” 70.

76. Cushman, “‘Most Valuable Birds,’” 488.

77. Duffy, “Guano Islands of Peru,” 71.

78. Weimerskirch, Bertrand, Silva, et al., “Use of Social Information in Seabirds,” 2.

79. Duffy, “Guano Islands of Peru,” 72; Elisa Goya, “Abundance of Guano Birds and Its Relation with Fishery of Peruvian Anchoveta from 1953 to 1999” (abstract), IMARPE Boletin 19, nos. 1, 2 (2000): 3–4.

80. Elisa Goya, personal communication, September 19, 2012.

81. Weimerskirch, Bertrand, Silva, et al., “Use of Social Information in Seabirds,” 2.

82. Simon Romero, “Peru Guards Its Guano as Demand Soars Again,” New York Times, May 30, 2008, A6, 10. See also Dan Collyns,“How a Peruvian Island Is Making Money from Bird Poo,” September 2, 2010, BBC News (video), www.bbc.co.uk/news/business.

83. Nelson, Pelicans, Cormorants and Their Relatives, 513–14.

84. Cushman, “‘Most Valuable Birds,’” 478.

85. Sophie Bertrand, Elisa Goya, and Jaime Silva, “Fishers and Seabirds Competing for the Same Fish: Foraging Strategies, Interactions and Consequences” (abstract), IMARPE Boletin 25, nos. 1, 2 (2010): 2. As a past strategy, see Cushman, “‘Most Valuable Birds,’” 493.

86. Weimerskirch, Bertrand, Silva, et al., “Use of Social Information in Seabirds,” 3–4.

11. CAPE TOWN, SOUTH AFRICA

Elaine Hayes is quoted in a press release, “Heartbreak for Living Coasts,” September 28, 2010, Living Coasts, www.livingcoasts.org.uk/news/359.

1. See Dyan deNapoli, The Great Penguin Rescue (New York: Free Press, 2011).

2. N.J. Parsons and L. G. Underhill, “Oiled and Injured African Penguins Spheniscus demersus and Other Seabirds Admitted for Rehabilitation in the Western Cape, South Africa, 2001 and 2002,” African Journal of Marine Science 27, no. 1 (2005): 289.

3. Debate remains about splitting the crowned cormorant (P. coronatus) from the long-tailed, known locally as the “reed” cormorant (P. africanus), and whether this great cormorant (P. carbo lucidus) should be its own species.

4. Nola Parsons, personal communications, a series of interviews from March through June 2012. All quotations are from these interviews,

5. David Cameron Duffy and W. Roy Siegfried, “Historical Variations in Food Consumption by Breeding Seabirds of the Humboldt and Benguela Upwelling Regions,” in Seabirds: Feeding Ecology and Role in Marine Ecosystems, ed. J. P. Croxall (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987), 327–46,

6. Ibid., 328.

7. D. H. Davies, as cited in A. P. Bowmaker, “Cormorant Predation on Two Central African Lakes,” Ostrich 34, no. 1 (March 1963): 3.

8. Duffy and Siegfried, “Historical Variations in Food Consumption,” 339–41.

9. H. H. Berry, “Mass Mortality of Cape Cormorants, Caused by Fish Oil, in the Wal-vis Bay Region of South West Africa,” Madoqua 9, no. 4 (1976): 61; R.J. M. Crawford and J. Cooper, “Cape Cormorant Phalacrocorax capensis,” in Roberts’ Birds of Southern Africa, 7th ed., ed. P. A. R. Hockey, W. R.J. Dean, and P. G. Ryan (Cape Town: Trustees of the John Voelcker Bird Book Fund, 2005), 579.

10. Duffy and Siegfried, “Historical Variations in Food Consumption,” 330.

11. Charles John Andersson, Notes on the Birds of Damara Land and the Adjacent Countries of South-West Africa, ed. John Henry Gurney, trans. L. Lloyd (London: John Van Voorst, 1872), 368.

12. Ibid.

13. G.J. van der Linde and M. A. Pitse, “The South African Fertiliser Industry,” paper presented at AFA Conference (Cairo, 2006), 1; Arthur C. Watson, “The Guano Islands of Southwestern Africa,” Geographical Review 20, no. 4 (October 1930): 634.

14. Skaggs, Great Guano Rush, 8; Watson, “Guano Islands,” 634–35.

15. Skaggs, Great Guano Rush, 7–8. The first captain to visit Ichaboe estimated the deposit at between 1.4 to 1.6 million pounds: see Watson, “Guano Islands,” 634.

16. Watson, “Guano Islands,” 633, 640.

17. Skaggs, Great Guano Rush, 155.

18. Les Underhill, “Bird Rock: The Walvis Bay Guano Platform,” February 13, 2003, Avian Demography Unit, University of Cape Town, http://web.uct.acza/depts/stats/adu/walvisbayguanoplatform.htm; H. H. Berry,”The History of the Guano Platform on Bird Rock, Walvis Bay, South West Africa,” Bokmakierie 27 (1975): 62–63.

19. Jessica Kemper, personal communication, June 9, 2012; deNapoli, Great Penguin Rescue, 44; Andreas Vogt, “White Gold: A Visit to Bird Rock Island,” May 11, 2009, Allgemeine Zeitung (Namibia), www.az.com.na/tourismus; Duffy, “Guano Islands of Peru,” 74.

20. J. Cooper, “Biology of the Bank Cormorant, Part 1: Distribution, Population Size, Movements and Conservation,” Ostrich 52 (1980): 208, 212.

21. Johan August Wahlberg, Travel Journals (and Some Letters) South Africa and Namibia/Botswana, 1838–1856, ed. Adrian Craig and Chris Hummel, trans. Michael Roberts (Cape Town: Van Riebeeck Society, 1994), 13. The bank cormorant today is known sometimes as “Wahlberg’s cormorant.” Wahlberg wrote in this first description of the bank cormorant: “Iris ochre-yellow in adult birds, but green on the lower moiety [half], in younger specimens entirely a cinerous brown.” As cited in Andersson, Notes on the Hirds of Damara Land, 369–70.

22. Wahlberg, Travel Journals, 150. The two new ones here are the bank and the crowned.

23. As cited in Andersson, 370.

24. Ibid., xiii.

25. It was named as “neglected” and “ignored,” meaning previously so. In other words, only until now described. R.J. M. Crawford and J. Cooper, “Bank Cormorant Phalacrocorax neglectus” in Hockey, Dean, and Ryan, Roberts’ Birds of Southern Africa, 7th ed., 577–78.

26. Nelson, Pelicans, Cormorants and Their Relatives, 433; Michelle du Toit, “Bank Cormorant, Phalacrocorax neglectus” March 30, 2004, Avian Demography Unit, University of Cape Town, http://web.uct.ac.za/depts/stats/adu/species/bankcormorant.htm; BirdLife International, “Phalacrocorax neglectus” 2011, IUCN Red List of Threatened Species, version 2011.2, www.iucnredlist.org.

27. A. E. Burger, “ Functional Anatomy of the Feeding Apparatus of Four South African Cormorants,” Zoologica Africana 13, no. 1 (1978): 93, 97.

28. BirdLife International, “Phalacrocorax neglectus”; Timothée Cook, personal communication, September 28, 2012.

29. BirdLife International, “Phalacrocorax neglectus”; Timothée Cook, personal communications, July 22 and September 28, 2012; Crawford and Cooper, “Bank Cormorant,”

30. Timothée Cook, personal communication, July 22, 2012.

31. Timothée Cook, personal communication, September 28, 2012; R.J. M. Crawford, S. Davis, R. Harding, et al., “Initial Impact of the Treasure Oil Spill on Seabirds off Western South Africa,” South African Journal of Marine Science 22 (2000): 163.

32. Michelle du Toit, http://web.uct.acza/depts/stats/adu/species/bankcormorant.htm; BirdLife International, “Phalacrocorax neglectus”; Timothée Cook, personal communication, July 22, 2012; R.J. M. Crawford, A. C. Cockcroft, B. M. Dyer, and L. Up-fold,”Divergent Trends in Bank Cormorants Phalacrocorax neglectus Breeding in South Africa’s Western Cape Consistent with a Distributional Shift of Rock Lobsters Jasus lalandii,” African Journal of Marine Science 31 (2008): 161–66. See also R.J. M. Crawford, P. A. Whittington, A. P. Martin, A.J. Tree, and Azwianewi B. Makhado, “Population Trends of Seabirds Breeding in South Africa’s Eastern Cape and the Possible Influence of Anthropogenic and Environmental Change,” Marine Ornithology 37 (2009): 159–74.

33. R. L.Johnson, A. Venter, M. N. Bester, and W H. Oosthuizen, “Seabird Predation by White Shark, Carcharodon carcharias, and Cape Fur Seal, Arctocephalus pusillus pusillus, at Dyer Island,” South African Journal of Wildlife Research 36, no. 1 (2006): 23; Timothée Cook, personal communication, July 22, 2012. See also Anne Voorbergen, Willem F. De Boer, and Les G. Underhill, “Natural and Human-Induced Predation on Cape Cormorants at Dyer Island,” Bird Conservation International 22 (2012): 82–93.

34. H. H. Berry, “Physiological and Behavioural Ecology of the Cape Cormorant, Phalacrocorax capensis,” Madoqua 9, no. 4 (1976): 42.

35. Ibid.; Nelson, Pelicans, Cormorants and Their Relatives, 160.

36. Kazuto Hino, personal communication, June 12, 2012.

37. Hanson, Feathers, 220.

38. A. M. Rijke, “The Water Repellency and Feather Structure of Cormorants, Phala-crocoracidae,” Journal of Experimental Biology 48 (1968): 187–89.

39. Hanson, Feathers, 221.

40. P. J. Jones, “A Possible Function of the ‘Wing-Drying’ Posture in the Reed Cormorant Phalacrocorax africanus,” Ibis 120, no. 4 (1978): 542.

41. David Grémillet, “ ‘Wing-Drying’ in Cormorants,” Journal of Avian Biology 26, no. 2 (1995): 176.

42. Craig W. White, Graham R. Martin, and Patrick J. Butler, “Wing-Spreading, Wing-Drying, and Food-Warming in Great Cormorants Phalacrocorax carbo,” Journal of Avian Biology 39, no. 5 (September 2008): 578.

43. Melville, Moby-Dick, 234.

44. John Blight, “Cormorants,” Selected Poems 1939–1990 (St. Lucia: University of Queensland Press, 1992), 42.

45. Bruce Coultas, Elizabeth Cridland, et al., “How SANCCOB Began: The Story of Our Founder,” South African Foundation for the Conservation of Coastal Birds, www.SANCCOB.co.za.

46. DeNapoli, Great Penguin Rescue, 54–56; Les Underhill, “A Brief History of Penguin Oiling in South African Waters,” March 18, 2001, Avian Demography Unit, University of Cape Town, http://web.uct.ac.za/depts/stats/adu/oilspill/oilhist.htm.

47. Crawford, Davis, Harding, et al., “Initial Impact of the Treasure,” 157.

48. C. L. Griffiths, L. van Sittert, P. B. Best, et al., “Impacts of Human Activities on Marine Animal Life in the Benguela: A Historical Overview,” Oceanography and Marine Biology: An Annual Revue 42 (2004): 322.

49. “Status of Restoration: Cormorants,” Exxon Valdez Oil Spill Trustee Council, www.evostc.state.ak.us (accessed September 26, 2012).

50. BirdLife International, “Phalacrocorax nigrogularis,” 2011, IUCN Red List of Threatened Species, version 2011.2, www.iucnredlist.org; Nelson, Pelicans, Cormorants and Their Relatives, 430–31.

51. Mariam M. Al Serkal, “Release of Flamingos and Cormorants,” November 28, 2012, GulfNews.com.

52. “Deepwater Horizon Bird Impact Data from the DOI-ERDC NRDA Database 12 May 2011,” U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, www.fws.gov/home/dhoilspill/pdfs/Bird %20Data%20Species%20Spreadsheet%2005122011.pdf; Alberto Velando, David Álvarez, Jorge Mouriño, Francisco Arcos, and Álvaro Barros, “Population Trends and Reproductive Success of the European Shag Phalacrocorax aristotelis on the Iberian Peninsula following the Prestige Oil Spill,” Journal of Ornithology 146 (2005): 116–17.

53. Ibid., 116.

54. Dan Gunderson, “BP Oil Spill Residue Found on Pelicans in Minnesota,” May 16, 2012, Minnesota Public Radio, http://minnesota.publicradio.org.

55. Berry, “Mass Mortality of Cape Cormorants,” 57, 59.

56. BirdLife International, “Phalacrocorax neglectus.”

57. Jessica Kemper, personal communication, June 9, 2012.

58. Elaine Hayes, personal communication, February 1, 2011.

59. Press release, “Rare Species Banking on Living Coasts,” Living Coasts, July 11, 2009, www.livingcoasts.org.uk/news/293.

60. Staff at the Robben Island Museum, University of Cape Town, Department of Environmental Affairs, and SANCCOB were responsible for assisting Living Coasts with gathering these bank cormorant eggs.

61. Press release, “Heartbreak for Living Coasts,” September 28, 2010, Living Coasts, www.livingcoasts.org.uk/news/359.

62. Ibid.

63. Elaine Hayes, personal communication, February 1, 2012.

12. GATES ISLAND, UNITED STATES

The epigraph is from Mendall’s The Home-Life and Economic Status of the Double-Crested Cormorant (Orono: University of Maine, 1936), 136.

1. Army Corps of Engineers, Portland District, “Draft Environmental Assessment,” 18; Associated Press, “OSU Students to Haze Columbia River Cormorants,” Seattle Times, February 8, 2012, seattletimes.com.

2. Jeff Barnard, “Oregon Asks to Kill Salmon-Eating Birds,” East Oregonian and Associated Press, April 27, 2012, http://www.eastoregonian.com.

3. Larry Coonrod, “Cormorant Hazing,” South Lincoln County News (Waldport, OR), May 9, 2012, www.southlincolncountynews.com.

4. LSU Ag Center, “Tenn. Company Licenses ‘Scarebot’ from LSU AgCenter,” Catfish Journal 25, no. 11 (July 2011): 11.

5. “John Kline to Testify on His Bill to Allow States to Manage Menacing Cormorant Overpopulation,” March 28, 2012, Congressman John Kline, kline.house.gov.

6. Rena Sarigianopoulos, “Calls for Cormorant Control on Lake Waconia,” Kare 11 / NBC, October 19, 2011, www.karen.com; Barfsoup,”Huge Flock of Cormorants,” October 9, 2006, YouTube, www.youtube.com.

7. Linda Wires, personal communication, January 12, 2009.

8. Terry Doyle, USFWS, personal communication, April 12 and June 1, 2012.

9. Ontario Parks, “Annual Report on the Management of Double-Crested Cormorants at Presqu’ile Provincial Park,” Queens Printer for Ontario (2006), 18; Chip Weseloh, personal communication, April 20, 2012; Terry Doyle, personal communication, June 1, 2012.

10. USFWS, “Final Environmental Impact Statement: Double-Crested Cormorant Management in the United States,” 23; Tyson, Belant, Cuthbert, and Weseloh, “Nesting Populations,” 20; USFWS, “Final Environmental Assessment: Extended Management of Double-Crested Cormorants,” 5. This rough one to two million was before the federal management plan, but also does not include the natural growth of the species since 1999. Terry Doyle, USFWS wildlife biologist, wrote to me about my writing this percentage range: “This is a misleading statement. On average, less than 3 percent of the continental population of Double-crested Cormorants is taken each year. Summing the take from 2004–2011 does not make sense, unless you compare that to the sum of the continental population over that same period” (personal communication, June 1, 2012). Acquiring, or even modeling, the total population each year, however, is very difficult.

11. W. M. W. Fowler, Countryman’s Cooking (Ludlow: Excellent Press, 2006), 30–31.

12. People around the world still eat cormorants, and the birds have a place in many historic cuisines. Apparently early Irish and Spanish coastal communities ate shag. There’s a recipe for cormorant soup in Gaelic from the Hebrides held by the Scottish Council on Archives. Cormorants can apparently still be found on the odd menu in Ice-land. See, for example: Hull, Scottish Birds, 98; Emma Cowing, “ ‘Edible Archive’ Needs Strong Stomach,” Scotland on Sunday, August 21, 2011, www.scotsman.com/news/edible-archive-needs-strong-stomach-1–1801741; Jane Victoria Appleton and Lisa Gail Shannen, Frommer’s Iceland (Chichester: John Wiley & Sons, 2010): Google eBook.

13. Jim Andrews and AccuWeather, “Do Peru’s Marine Die-Offs Herald the Return of El Nino?” Scientific American, May 8, 2012, www.scientificamerican.com.

14. “New Zealand Oil Spill Ship Owners Charged,” Guardian, April 5, 2012, www.guardian.co.uk.

15. “Kiso Cormorant Fishermen Add Woman to Fold,” Japan Times, May 18, 2012, www.japantimes.co.jp.

16. “Project: Identifying the Causes for the Decline of the Endangered Bank Cormorant in Southern Africa,” Animal Demography Unit and the Percy FitzPatrick Institute, University of Cape Town, February 16, 2012, https://sites.google.com/site/timotheecook/-phd-opportunity.

17. Audubon, Ornithological Biography, 3:193.

18. Wires and Cuthbert, “Historic Populations,” 29–30.

19. Jeremy J. Hatch, Kevin M. Brown, Geoffrey G. Hogan, and Ralph D. Morris, “Great Cormorant (Phalacrocorax carbo),” Birds of North America Online, ed. A. Poole (Ithaca, NY: Cornell Lab of Ornithology, 2000), http://bna.birds.cornell.edu/bna/species/553; Elphick, Dunning, and Sibley, Sibley Guide, 161.

20. Fred J. Alsop III, Birds of North America (New York, DK Publishing / Smithsonian, 2001), 112; Hatch, Brown, Hogan, and Morris, “Great Cormorant.”

21. Samuel de Champlain, The Works of Samuel de Champlain, vol. 1 (Toronto: Champlain Society, 1922), 241, 243. Looking at accounts by Audubon and Lewis, Wires and Cuthbert suggest these were double-crested. See Wires and Cuthbert, “Historic Populations,” 9.

22. Lewis, Natural History, 4.

23. William Wood, New England’s Prospect, ed. Alden T. Vaughan (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1993), 51.

24. Ibid.

25. Mendall, “Home-Life,” 6.

26. Paul J. Lindholdt, ed., John Josselyn, Colonial Traveler: A Critical Edition of Two Voyages to New-England (Hanover, NH: University Press of New England, 1988), 73–74.

27. John Brickell, The Natural History of North-Carolina (Dublin: James Carson, 1737), 211–12.

28. Mendall, “Home-Life,” 7–8.

29. Audubon, Ornithological Biography, 3:387. Audubon reported this true for both double-crested and great cormorants.

30. Lewis, Natural History, 5–9; Wires and Cuthbert, “Historic Populations,” 28.

31. Jane McCamant, “Double-Crested Cormorants in Fishers Island Sound: Our Role in the National Debate on Cormorant Control,” undergraduate paper (Mystic, CT, April 2004), 11.

32. Peg Van Patten, “Aqua Kids Discover That South Dumpling Island Is for the Birds,” Wrack Lines 11, no. 1 (Spring/Summer 2011): 12.

33. “Birds of Dumpling Island,” Aqua Kids, November 14, 2011, www.youtube.com.

34. American sand lance, sculpin, cusk, and tautog are the most common components of cormorant diets in this area. See Svati Narula and Richard King, “Who’s Afraid of the Big, Bad Cormorant?” Wrack Lines 12, no. 2 (Fall/Winter 2012/13): 12–15.

35. Brae Rafferty, personal communication, June 17, 2008.

36. Daniel J. Decker and Ken G. Purdy, “Toward a Concept of Wildlife Acceptance Capacity in Wildlife Management,” Wildlife Society Bulletin 16, no. 1 (Spring 1988): 53. Discussed specifically in relation to cormorants in Wires and Cuthbert, “Historic Populations” (2006).

37. J. R. Sauer, J. E. Hines, J. E. Fallon, K. L. Pardieck, D. J. Ziolkowski Jr., and W. A. Link, “Double-Crested Cormorant Phalacrocorax auritus: BBS Trend Map,” North American Breeding Bird Survey Results and Analysis 1966–2010, version 12.07.2011, USGS-Patuxet Wildlife Research Center (Laurel, MD: rev. April 16, 2012), www.mbr-pwrcusgs.gov/bbs/tr2010/tr01200.htm.

38. Hatch, “Changing Populations,” 11.

39. Remy Tumin, “Threat to Fish, Cormorants May Soon Be Driven from Area,” Vineyard Gazette, February 20, 2012, www.mvgazette.com/article.php?34055.

40. Ibid.

41. Charley Soares, “Black Death—the Birds from Hell,” On the Water 16, no. 3 (July 2012): 106.

42. Bill Sweetman, “The Navy’s Swimming Spy Plane,” POPSCI (February 21, 2006). www.popsci.com/node/3747; Lockheed Martin Corp., “Lockheed Martin MPUAV Cormorant,” 2008, www.youtube.com/watch?v=r-j8LNhCr8l.

43. Richard Grimmett, Carol Inskipp, and Tim Inskipp, A Guide to the Birds of India, Pakistan, Nepal, Bangladesh, Bhutan, Sri Lanka, and the Maldives (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1999), 558.

44. Egremont and Rothschild, “Calculating Cormorants,” 181. Nelson is skeptical.

45. Tim Birkhead, “Do Birds Have Emotions?” Chronicle Review, May 11, 2012, B14–B15.

46. Mendall, “Home-Life,” 171.

47. For example, see Jackson and Jackson, “Double-Crested Cormorant,” 126–27.

48. As in the note from chapter 2, this for double-crested: Weseloh and Casselman, “Calculated Fish Consumption,” 64. Diamond, Aprahamian, and North summarize studies of daily food intake in great cormorants (P. carbo sinensis and P. carbo carbo) as between 0.26 to 1.9 pounds of fish per day (0.12–0.88 kg); they used 0.9 pounds (0.4 kg) for their larger estimates. See M. Diamond, M. W. Aprahamian, and R. North, “A Theoretical Assessment of Cormorant Impact on Fish Stocks in Great Britain,” in Interactions between Fish and Birds: Implications for Management, ed. I. G. Cowx (Oxford: Blackwell Science, 2003), 48.

49. Bowmaker, “Cormorant Predation on Two Central African Lakes,” 18.

50. See, for example, Callum Roberts, The Unnatural History of the Sea (Washington, DC: Island Press, 2007), 320–21. See a careful, technical discussion of the challenges of trying to estimate actual bird predation effects on fish stocks in W. Dekker and J. J. De Leeuw, “Bird-Fisheries Interactions: The Complexity of Managing a System of Predators and Preys,” in Cowx, Interactions between Fish and Birds, 3–13. See also I. G. Cowx, “Interactions between Fisheries and Fish-Eating Birds: Optimising the Use of Shared Resources,” 364–65, in the same volume.

51. Lewis, Natural History, 84.

52. Weseloh and Collier, “Rise of the Double-Crested Cormorant,” 10.

53. See Sievert Rohwer, Christopher E. Filardi, Kimberly S. Bostwick, and A. Townsend Peterson, “A Critical Evaluation of Kenyon’s Shag (Phalacrocrax [Stictocarbo] kenyoni),” Auk 117, no. 2 (April 2000): 308–20.

54. James T. Carlton, personal communication, November 28, 2011.

55. Paul Heikkila, personal communication, March 14, 2002.

56. See, for example, Brown and Connelly, “Lake Ontario Sportfishing,” 19.

57. Jim Steeby, personal communication, April 5, 2012.

58. Sálim Ali and S. Dillon Ripley, Handbook of the Birds of India and Pakistan, vol. 1 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1968), 35. Ali and Ripley wrote: “Cormorants are notorious for their prodigious appetites, and their depredations on local fish populations can be potentially devastating. Nevertheless, the wholesale indiscriminate persecution of the birds on this account, without a proper scientific inquiry, is unjustified. Investigations on the food and feeding habits of these and other piscivorous birds elsewhere have shown that the majority of fishes taken are of low economic worth, or which themselves often constitute a far greater menace to the spawn and fry of valuable food fishes than the birds.”

59. “@Cormy Cormorant,” April 18, 2012, Twitter, http://twitter.com/#!/Cormy Cormorant.

60. Jane Weinberger, personal communication, February 12, 2002. See Jane Weinberger, Cory the Cormorant (Mount Desert, ME: Windswept, 1992).

61. Celia Thaxter, Drift-Weed (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1890), 123–24.