Brandt’s Cormorant

Three cormorant species are reported from Budd Bay in Olympia. Most are Double-crested Cormorants. Occasionally I have seen Brandt’s Cormorants on a distant channel light, like these on 10 November 2020. Actually I have never recorded Pelagic Cormorants here, but they pop up on eBird now and again. I have seen Pelagics at nearby Woodward Bay, about 6 miles east of Olympia. Note the yellow chin bar and the relatively thin, dark bill on the Brant’s Cormorant in this photo. (The bird is actually sticking its neck up from behind another cormorant.) The final photo was taken by me in La Jolla, California, in March 2012.

Brandt’s Cormorants are found along the North American coast from Alaska to northern Mexico. This cormoant is named for a Russian ornithologist, who first described the species in 1838 from a specimen in the Academy of Sciences at St. Petersburg, Russia. The type specimen is now lost and the original collector of the bird is unknown. Wallace and Wallace (2020) speculate “The specimen likely was collected by Russian naturalists during one of several expeditions to the Pacific Coast of North America during the early 1800s.”