Massachusetts Breeding Bird Atlas 1
Atlas 1 data collected from 1975-1979

Back

Great Cormorant
Phalacrocorax carbo

Egg Dates:
Number of broods:

The only nesting record for Massachusetts of this northern species was a nest containing three eggs discovered on June 4, 1984, on the Weepecket Islands off Naushon Island, Dukes County, in Buzzards Bay (Hatch).

Despite the dramatic explosion of Doublecrested Cormorant breeding numbers along the Atlantic coast, no subsequent Massachusetts breeding records of the Great Cormorant have been documented, although small numbers of nonbreeding individuals are regularly noted along the coast every summer. In the future, special attention should be paid to areas where Double-crested Cormorants are breeding. At present, the Buzzards Bay nesting is the southernmost breeding record for North America and the only one south of Maine, where the species was first conclusively recorded as nesting off Isle au Haut in 1983 (AB).

Great Cormorants are most numerous in Massachusetts in winter when single-day count totals sometimes reach several hundred.

Back to top

Copyright © 2003 edited by Wayne R. Petersen and W. Roger Meservey. Published by the Massachusetts Audubon Society. Distributed by the University of Massachusetts Press, P.O. Box 429, Amherst, Massachusetts 01004-0429.

All rights reserved. No part of this site may be reproduced or transmitted in any form by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by any information or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the Massachusetts Audubon Society, publisher.