Double-crested Cormorants

On 18 November 2021, Erika and I took this image of an immature Double-crested Cormorant along Olympia’s Capitol Lake. I was on the lookout for this species, since recently I wrote about the Puget Sound’s other two cormorants. Double-crested Cormorants are abundant here, but their beauty always surprises me. As breeders, migrants, or winter visitors, these cormorants are found across the United States, coastal Canada and Mexico. Cormorants have always been thought to be related to pelicans, but recent molecular studies suggest that the pelicans are actually more closely related to herons and egrets (Dorr et al. 2021).