EPOW - Ecology Picture of the Week

Red-legged Cormorant Colony

Red-legged Cormorant (Poikilocarbo gaimardi), Phalacrocoracidae 
Chiloe Island, Chile

Explanation:  We are boating around a small offshore stack, off the Pacific Ocean coast of Chiloe Island in central Chile, South America.  Here, we find a small nesting colony of Red-legged Cormorants.  

Red-legged Cormorants are marine birds of the coastal and intertidal environment.  These are found in South America along the southeast Atlantic Ocean coast of Argentina, and along the west Pacific Ocean coast from Peru to southern Chile.  

They are listed by IUCN as Near Threatened, with a decreasing population.  The major threat is unintentional interference in fishing gear, as they dive for their fish and invertebrate food in the near-shore and intertidal areas where people also fish.  But also hunting, trapping, and reduced marine food productivity under El Niño conditions pose further stresses.   

The species forms only very small groups and colonies, likely aggregating to the scarce locations providing marine food and suitable rocky ledges for nesting and resting, such as in the following photo showing a female tending to her chick on the nest, covering her with her wing:

Aside from the brilliant crimson red legs -- their namesake -- Red-legged Cormorants are easily recognized, and differentiated from other cormorants by the large white neck patches, the yellow bills with red culm at the base of the bill, and especially by their plumage being gray and speckled with white, very much unlike other cormorant species with black plumage and lacking the brilliant bill colorations.  

And here, similar-looking male and females rest on their cliff-ledge nest on this offshore stack (that is also shared with two species of penguins and marine otters -- quite the crowded neighborhood, necessitating tolerance, as we too often need to learn!).