EPOW - Ecology Picture of the Week

Pied Shag in a Tree

Pied Shag (Phalacrocorax varius), Family Phalacrocoracidae
North Island, New Zealand

Explanation:  It is again the wonderful holiday season!  Happy holidays, everyone!

As I sit here humming The Twelve Days of Christmas (and happiest days for whatever holiday you may be celebrating), I pause at the line "... and a partridge in a pear tree."  

I don't have a photo of a partridge in a pear tree, or in any tree for that matter.  So here's the best I can do for you ... a pied shag in a New Zealand Christmas Tree -- how appropriate a name for this holiday season!  Yes, that is the common name of this tree, which also goes by the local Maori name pohutukawa and the scientific name Metrosideros excelsa.  

This bird is actually a cormorant, which are called shags in New Zealand (and Australia) because the term "shag" refers to the bird's head crest that appears in the New Zealand (and Australian) forms and is not found in the same species that occurs in Great Britain.  (And I won't delve into the more common slang definition of "shag" used in all of these places...)

"Pied" refers to the black and white appearance of the birds of this species.  

Pied shags occur mostly along the coastline, as they feed on fish offshore by diving into the sea, plunging up to 10 m (30 ft) deep for up to 30 seconds at a time (you try doing that and catching a fish in your teeth!).  

Pied shags sometimes form large colonies in trees on the coast, as I found here along the west coast of Coromandel Peninsula of North Island, New Zealand:
 

This colony of several hundred pied shags made their nests and roosts
in these coastal New Zealand Christmas Trees.

The feathery, red blooms of the New Zealand Christmas Tree
can be seen here in the background of these colony-nesting pied shags.

So, happiest of holidays, everyone,
from shags and Christmas Trees alike,
from Ecology Picture of the Week !

    
                          

  
Acknowledgment:  My great thanks to colleague, fellow traveler, and entomologist Dr. Steve Pawson, who hosted me on my recent New Zealand visit and drove the serpentine highways of North Island in search of bugs, birds, and native forests.