Great cormorant

Great cormorant

The cormorant is an old, trusted inhabitant of the water-rich Netherlands. It is a large, dark water bird with a hooked beak. A good tool for fishing. Their flight is firm and resolute, they fly in a tight line to their destination. Also familiar is the image of cormorants with wings spread out to dry. Cormorants breed in colonies.

While swimming, the bird lies deep in the water, while the head is held at an angle.
The bird does not have a waterproof plumage and gets wet to the skin when diving. Before the cormorant flies back to the nest after diving, the bird lets the wings dry in a high spot with the wings spread.
Because the birds breed in colonies and prefer to eat eels, the birds pose a threat to the eel population, according to professional fisheries. For this reason, the cormorant has been persecuted in the past, reducing the population to less than a thousand breeding pairs by the year 1960. Due to legal protection, but also due to an increase in the food supply, the population has now recovered to approximately 25,000 breeding pairs.

Food: The food consists of live fish, such as roach, perch, zander and eel. A cormorant eats at least 500 grams of fish every day. This can increase to 1000 grams per bird during the breeding season if a nest with three half-grown young is taken care of. Therefore, although the cormorant is considered by professional fishermen to be one of the causes of the decline of the eel population, there is no scientific evidence for this.

Song/call: