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Pygmy Cormorant | Microcarbo pygmaeus
Dwergaalscholver | Cormorán pigmeo
The Pygmy Cormorant is the smallest cormorant of the Old World, no bigger than a Coot and with a tail almost as long as its body. It belongs to overgrown fresh water and usually sits low in willows or reeds along the bank rather than out on a windy groyne.
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Voice
Almost always silent away from the colony. At the colony, from April to July, short hoarse barking and pig-like grunting: a low korr-korr and a hoarse ga-ga-ga, thinner and higher than the deep rumble of a Great Cormorant. At roosts a little squealing accompanies arrival, but otherwise they are remarkably quiet.
Recording: Stanislas Wroza — CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 · Wikimedia Commons
Identification
Small and compact, 45 to 55 centimetres, with a long tail often held cocked, which makes the silhouette back-heavy; on swimming and perched birds that is the quickest thing to see. The head is small and round with a steep forehead, the bill short, thin and slightly hooked, without the heavy jaw of a Great Cormorant. The bare skin around the bill base is small and dark to dull yellow; there is no white chin patch and no orange-yellow gular pouch at all. Breeding birds are black with a green gloss, with a rusty-brown head and fine white hair-like feathers over head and neck; outside the breeding season the head is dull brown with a pale throat. In flight it stands out by its small size, fast wingbeats and straight neck: short in front, long behind, the reverse of the Great Cormorant shape.
Confusion species
Great Cormorant is nearly twice the size, has a white chin patch, bare yellow skin around the bill base and a short tail, and flies with a thick, kinked neck; a Pygmy Cormorant holds its neck straight. Shag is also larger, has a steep forehead with a thin bill and a bright yellow gape line, and keeps to rocky coasts and open sea rather than marshy water. A juvenile Great Cormorant is brown and may cause a moment's doubt on a lone bird, but is at once far bulkier and much longer billed. At a distance a swimming Pygmy Cormorant looks most like a Coot or a small duck; the tilted-up little bill and the long tail settle it.
Habitat
Structured lowland fresh water: overgrown lakes and oxbows, slow rivers and delta channels, extensive reedbeds and the willow scrub along the bank, where it loafs by day and roosts at night. Also fish farms, rice fields and canals. It fishes in shallow, sheltered water and will hunt right into narrow ditches, which the Great Cormorant does not.
Where the bird is most at home, classified with EUNIS — the European standard for habitats.
Range and movements
The core lies in south-east Europe and south-west Asia: the Danube delta, the Balkans with Kerkini and Prespa, Anatolia, the Caucasus and the Caspian region. Since the 1980s the western edge has been moving. On the northern Adriatic it now breeds chiefly in the Po delta and the Venice lagoon, with winter concentrations of over ten thousand birds. Central Europe, from the Pannonian Basin to Bavaria, now holds breeders too. Elsewhere in the map area it remains a vagrant.
- Resident
- Breeding (summer)
- Winter
- Passage
- dark = core range, pale = thinly spread
How and when to look
Do not wait for one in the west or north of the map area; go to the northern Adriatic instead. From November to February the Po delta and the Venice lagoon hold communal roosts of hundreds to thousands of birds in willow and reed. Stand near such a roost an hour before sunset and they come in low over the water in small fast parties. To see the breeding plumage with its rusty-brown head, visit Lake Kerkini in April or May at first light, from the dyke along the southern shore.
Conservation status
Not globally threatened (IUCN: Least Concern); the species formerly sat in a higher category and was downlisted once numbers recovered. In Europe the population is rising and the breeding range is shifting west. The main threats are the draining and dredging of marshes, winter reed burning, disturbance of roosts, drowning in fishing nets, and shooting of birds mistaken for Great Cormorants.
Scientific name
Microcarbo pygmaeus | (Pallas, 1773)
Pallas described the species in 1773 as Pelecanus pygmeus; because it was later moved to another genus, the author and year stand in brackets. The genus Microcarbo was introduced in 1856 by Bonaparte. Microcarbo combines Greek mikros 'small' with the genus name Carbo, and thus means 'small cormorant'. pygmaeus is Latin, from Greek pugmaios 'dwarfish', after the bird's small size. The specimen the first description was based on came from the Caspian Sea.