What is the origin of cormorant?

Cormorants are large water birds that live in coastal areas or near lakes and rivers, and are usually black, brown, or greyish. Cormorant comes from two Latin words: corvus meaning crow and marinus meaning marine. So, cormorant is another way of saying sea-crow. It may have had its origin in Cornish mythology. In the Comish tale of Jack the Giant Killer, Cormoran is a sea giant. Though cormorants have little in common with crows except for their black plumage, the birds were erroneously thought to be related to ravens till the 16th Century.

Cormorants inhabit seacoasts, lakes, and some rivers. The nest may be made of seaweed and guano on a cliff or of sticks in a bush or tree. The two to four chalky eggs, pale blue when fresh, hatch in three to five weeks, and the young mature in the third year.

Cormorants have a long hook-tipped bill, patches of bare skin on the face, and a small gular sac (throat pouch). The largest and most widespread species is the common, or great, cormorant, Phalacrocorax carbo; white-cheeked, and up to 100 cm (40 inches) long, it breeds from eastern Canada to Iceland, across Eurasia to Australia and New Zealand, and in parts of Africa. It and the slightly smaller Japanese cormorant, P. capillatus, are the species trained for fishing. The most important guano producers are the Peruvian cormorant, or guanay, P. bougainvillii, and the Cape cormorant, P. capensis, of coastal southern Africa.

Picture Credit : Google

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