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<span style="font-family: helvetica; font-size: 12pt;">You're so right, Michael; my bad. I don't know where my head was when I wrote that, not that I haven't seen so many of those white-flanked birds every year. If only tweeters accepted photos, I would have of course remembered that as soon as I picked out photos to illustrate my comments.</span>
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<span style="font-family: helvetica; font-size: 12pt;">So next question: when do these gorgeous birds go to their breeding sites? I assume they don't pair up until they are at their nest sites. And why do Pelagics signal from their flanks, when the other cormorants don't seem to need that? Something about a big white spot at a cliff nest site showing that it's inhabited?</span>
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<span style="font-family: helvetica; font-size: 12pt;">Dennis</span>
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On 02/07/2023 11:23 PM Michael Price <loblollyboy@gmail.com> wrote:
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Dennis Paulson writes: <In all three regional cormorants, the only visible sign of it are breeding plumes and bare-skin color, not so obvious except at close range but indeed very dramatic then.
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This isn't the first time I have wished I could add photos to a post! ;-) >
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Likewise, Dennis. I have to take mild issue with the contention that all cormorants show only plumes and bare-skin color changes when in Alternate plumage. In such plumage, Pelagic and Red-faced (RFCO) both show quite conspicuous white flank patches. So when about a third of the Prospect Point lot disappear in all-dark nonbreeding plumage in mid-November and reappear in mid-January with big white bum-patches characteristic of breeding plumage--well, what's a boy to do but conclude these (returning?) birds are rarin' to go, reproductively? Otherwise, what's their flash new plumage for?
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Such an early initiation of breeding display would inspire the question that Hal Michael raises, of piscivores taking advantage of a mid- to late-winter fishery to promote breeding success.
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