Does anybody know anything about El Cormorante flyways and seasonal habits?

I've only seen one ever at my place in ten years and this morning the sky was thick with them. I had three vigorously feeding on my pond.

Just trying to figure out if they're just passing through, or if they might hang around for awhile.

I don't know about their migratory patterns. They obviously move, but I'm guessing that they prefer to stay where they find a regular source of food and tolerable weather.

This could be because I'm in a more temperate climate, but at the public lakes around San Antonio, they make DAILY flights to feed on the water just after daylight and stay all year.

For the above reasons, they do not get a free pass at our ponds.

Since our wonderful government see fit to federally protect this useless bird, get ready to see more of them. In one day, they can arrive in 1000's, and clear forage by the ton. They are increasing their numbers and range everyday, just get ready to see more of them if your state doesn't allow permits.

I treat them like coyotes, hang a dead one on a tree or fence clost to the pond, they also become afraid of gunshots...so just throw some lead in the general direction, it works.

So are they migratory? Might they be just "passing through"?

Bruce, I don't know the answer to your question ....... but at the BarO they are definately "passing through" or "on".

Bruce, I live 1/4 mile from Lake Ray Hubbard in Dallas. When I moved here in 1990, I didn't know what they were, and didn't see them. Now, I can drive past the lake on any given day and see them at their usual hangouts. They're 24/7/365.

It's a power plant lake, so I'm not sure if that makes a difference or not.

Bruce,

This website suggests that they migrate:
http://digitalcommons.unl.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1144&context=icwdm_usdanwrc

It also says:
"Most of the interior populations are located from the Great Lakes west across the northern prairies of the United States in Canada."
Considering that you're in the "Upper Central Midwestern Great Plains," that puts you in their neck of the woods.

P.S.- Don't tell the cormorants on the Gulf Coast that they're the minority. They sure don't breed/act like it.

Their flyways are dodging lead and they like their fish un-seasoned.

Usually a scout bird will come by and take a look and if it looks good (after a sample) he brings his friends by for the big buffet. You had better act fast or they will destroy a pond.

They are a migratory bird. And they are migrating now. I have some fairly often. I had aprox 30 the other day. IMO due whatever is needed to rid your pond of them. I don't know much about their patterns, but when they are in the area they seem to stay for a while. However, the more you harass them, the less they will stay around.

Bruce, They migrate through our area. One year we had 4 of 40 die of unknown causes. We let them rot on the shore. Sunil called it carnage. I call it natural selection.

In Texas, they do not all migrate, just like doves...the lazy ones say what the heck, why flap my wings off, there's plenty of food here

There are few things worse than a lazy bird that eats fish.

Check out these links:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QDDrz7E8-AA

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2IVTNnUhEy8&feature=related

Its always a good idea to have a loaded gun just in case of need

Cormorants fish at night? Noooooooo!

Would a dog on the shore deter them?

Great Pyraneese livestock guard dogs will not let any critters, land or water vaiety, stick around for long.
Was a problem cleaning up dead tiapia last winter die off becasue Brutus and Belle kept chasing the buzzards.

El Cormorante made another visit while I was at the farm this morning. Same time of day. This time there were eight of them. They passed low, looked me over, passed again, and then moved on. They are menacing.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4-1NiqwZZsM

i grew up in east texas on lake livingston and lots and lots of water turkeys ate my trotline bait which had hooks in them......

these were on the trot lines that i ran 24 inches under the surface to catch blue cats in the early morning chasing shad.

i forgot one on the beach one day with some hooks still baited and when i returned had 2 more caught on dry land....

so dont leave any trotlines/throwlines around your pond or you may hurt a water turkey.

They are thick on a lake where I learned how to duck hunt. To be honest, I never shot one but I really wanted to. At times they would come swimming by in large flocks chasing schools of baitfish. If I ever see one on my pond, I'm going home to get my Browning Gold.

Unless you only want to raise catfish get rid of them as quickly as you can. They are not good. I have tried to shoot them in the past but have not been succesful. I am not a good shot. I wish I had a fish large enough to eat one of them. I saw a shark on tv eating one.

Bruce, they should just be passing through. We had a few last week on our pond too. Be glad that you don't have any standing timber in your pond, they need a "safe" place to dry out after foraging.

Note to self.

Remove standing timber from pond.

50-60 Flying Botulisms were here today, no more.

We don't have any standing timber so they just dry off on the bank in a closely knit group. When they are in this closely knit group it is the best time to scare them off.

I use semi-automatic weapon fire at their feet. This really gets em dancing because it throws sand and gravel on them which they hate. I try to avoid actually hitting one with lead since they are protected by the act of some group of idiots hidden deep in the bowels of the government.

Every spring they show up, I scare them off and don't see them again until the next spring. That is the good part of the story, I hope it stays that way!

Just like Bob Lusk told me, "You can't catch a fish above the water". Cut them just above the water level so that you know where it is.

I heard a few months ago that the government is going to consider relaxing the regulations regarding cormorants. I couldn't find an article about it though.

"Just like Bob Lusk told me, "You can't catch a fish above the water". Cut them just above the water level so that you know where it is."


???

The wood above the water does nothing for the fish so you might as well cut everything down and leave just enough above the waterline to be able to find it when you go fishing.

I saw a cormorant at Mr H's big pond today while collecting RES. I don't often see them and I wonder if the Ospreys that are nesting at the pond might not keep them away. I've seen them chase off wading birds before. Funny thing is that the Ospreys are using a tall dead tree in the pond for their nest.

sounds like the perfect osprey habitat. there is a guy that lives on a lake near me who takes some of the most magnificent bird pictures i've ever seen. i've asked him if i could use them and he has no problems with this (he puts his branding on all the pics). here is an osprey he shot (w/ camera) a couple days ago at lake amador.



he's done several comorants, but i havent saved one of those yet.

Does anybody know if Canada Geese are territorial enough that they would try to discourage El Cormorante in a small pond?

Here's Mr H's flooded timber wonderland, with nesting Ospreys.

good question bruce, i have not seen my fish nabbing visitor in several weeks, and the (new) pair of nesting geese are keeping out all the other geese, and possibly the water turkey, but i havent witnessed that confrontation yet.

Geese can be intimidating when they want to be.

Great pic, GW!

Since our ponds are so low and some of the structure is currently above the water level, I took stringers and duck decoys and marked most all of it in the big pond. That should help the fishing later.

If we ever get a good rain, that is.

I highly doubt it. I've had both on my pond at the same time, keep in mind my pond is somewhat larger. I don't feel like they compete for the same area or food. Now, we do have some nests built for canada geese that are built over the water. I do think that if the Cormorant tried to climb into the nest area to preen itself, then the goose would feel threatened and run it off. But that would be the only case I could think of. In the years I helped my grandfather raise geese, he used to raise several hundred canadians a year, I found that they only protected a small perimeter around their nest.

You'll have to excuse Sunil today Chris. It's election day in PA.

Or so you and your boat motor knows where they are.

Davatsa,

Are your ponds already going down? Mine has only dropped a couple of inches.

Outside of Poth, TX, we've been in a drought for awhile now. The two larger ponds are 4-5' low. The little BG pond is low, but since it gets well water, it is not quite as low as the other two.


At my mom's place near Waelder, we're nearly at full pool.

We had 50-100 cormorants on our lake yesterday. I don't know how long they were there but they left the area when I scared them. This is the first time I've ever actually seen them on our lake. Does anyone know the maximun size of a LMB/SMB or BG they will take?

Norm, we had a dozen cormorants on our pond this last weekend and one osprey. While fishing Sunday I caught a 17" LMB that was missing scales on boths sides and she looked like a cormorant had tried to catch her. I suspect she was just a little bit too big for a cormorant but my best guesss is that a 15" LMB would be no problem for your average cormorant.

I saw one cormorant at my neighbor's 7 acre pond the other day. At first I was concerned that a bunch might show up, but if they did, and they removed a bunch of 12" to 15" LMB it would be a good thing because this pond has way too many in that range.

I think you guys hate when I say things like my post above, but the statement is a fair one isn't it? To say that predation by cormorants is always a bad thing makes me think of Bill Cody's axiom "it all depends".

I agree with the statement "it all depends" as it relates to cormorants and potential benefits from having them present.

But, could you not say the same thing about poachers? Can you imagine the response if I said "I noticed that there were ten uninvited people fishing my pond the other day. I'm hopeful that they targeted mostly mid-size largemouth bass because that would make certain my larger bass have more to eat. Poachers are can be very beneficial". People would think I'd lost my mind.

"People would think I'd lost my mind"

That ship has already sailed, my friend!

GW, the problem is that cormorants don't keep cull records nor do they honor slot limits.

I don't know about that Sunil, Shorty's post seem to suggest that one tried to eat a 17" fish and failed. It stands to reason that they would probably be most successful in the 10-15" range, and that seems like a common population to target for culling.

I don't think the poacher analogy works either Bruce because people will target the largest fish they can catch, not the largest they can swallow whole.

Mr. H's big pond is overpopulated with 12-15" LMB. Would it not be beneficial if a small flock of cormorants preyed on them for a period of time? I'm not saying let them wipe out every fish, I'm just saying that at this point the help in culling those LMB would be very beneficial to his pond.

I see your point, but don't you think that if you make them think this is a safe, productive place to eat that you may have problems convincing them it's time to stop?

That's the main question Bruce, and I don't know enough about animal behavior to comment. If it did take extra work to convince them to leave I guess you'd have to contrast that with the service they provided. How hard might it be to remove several hundred ( or thousand maybe?) 12-15" LMB from a 7 acre pond? I've been suggesting a Bass-a-thon for a long time, but the man power just isn't there. Everyone in this area has a pond or two it seems and most of them are overrun with bass.

One thing that does not depend - I am not farming out my management function to an uncontrolled flock of hungry birds that eat every fish in sight.

Yeah, but it's cheap labor.

GW - suppose your pond goals were intentionaly to be bass heavy and your intention was grow big BG, would you still want the commorants tharwting your goal by eating most of your bass? Just because one 17" LMB escaped a commorant doesn't mean that the rest of the 17"ers are safe, if I googled right they can eat fish up to 415 mm long. Let's hope they didn't find any of my high priced SMB.

http://www.dec.ny.gov/docs/wildlife_pdf/corm01sec3.pdf

The birds may not be under direct control, but there is certainly a limit to how much they could eat in a given period. I'm sure someone who studied cormorants could give a fair estimate.

I'm not suggesting that people go out of their way to attract cormorants, but I can see how their presence could benefit a bass-heavy pond at times. All I'm saying is that it doesn't seem logical to me that a person with too many 12" LMB gets freaked out because one cormorant is seen preying on their fish.

I always end up coming back to the same question; don't the vast majority of ponds suffer from under harvesting? And isn't it possible that many of these ponds would benefit from certain wild predators in limited quantities?

By all means you should monitor and control the number and species of wild predators, but I can't see how every wild predator is cause for great alarm.



No Shorty, if I wanted to be heavy with 12" LMB I wouldn't want anyone or anything to remove them.

And, if cormorants can eat 24" LMB then I retract my comments. I would also have much more respect for cormorants in general. Now if the 24" bass weighed 2 lbs. then it might be better that it gets eaten after all.


EDIT: My conversion of fish length to 24" was based on the original figure posted of 600 mm.

GW wrote: "I don't know about that Sunil, Shorty's post seem to suggest that one tried to eat a 17" fish and failed. It stands to reason that they would probably be most successful in the 10-15" range, and that seems like a common population to target for culling."


GW, if you want cormorants at your pond, more power to you; try it.

I disagree that poachers are any different; Bruce's analogy is spot-on. Most poachers take any fish that they catch regardless of size or species, and they have zero respect for the land that they are raping.

Cormorants are not something that you can turn on or off at your own fancy.

At any rate, one can't hold up a few isolated incidents or reports against the larger body of knowledge and experience of the damage that cormorants (or poachers) can do to a body of water.

Shorty's finding could have been a heron also. We have many documented cases of damage done by herons.

Mother Nature certainly can create her own pond management plan for your pond, and if her goal matches your goals, then again, more power to you. She will eventually reach some kind of balance.

GW, I am sure there is a definite limit on how many fish a cormorant can eat in a day. Is there a limit on how many cormorants can show up at one's ponds? That's the scary thought.

I will tolerate ONE (and only one) GBH and a pair of LGH at my pond. No appearances here by El Cormorante yet.

Do Cormorants kill fish by spearing (or otherwise wounding) that they don't/can't eat? I am pretty sure that GBH sometimes do that with fish too big to swallow..

GW, I did some more googling and the Great Comorant along the east coast can eat fish up to 600 mm long but they are not that common in the United States, they are more of a European bird. The double crested cormorant which is very common here can eat fish up to 415 mm which converts to 16.3" long. Sorry for the confusion.

Most people are not at the pond all the time. A 3 acre pond can go from fish (name your kind) heavy to dang near empty when the cormorant hoard dines. How do I know this ? I have friends who farm catfish commercially who have had their ponds of adult CC (market size) pummeled when the horde descended. Quite common for them to lose $10,000 in catfish in a day.

Double-crested Cormorants
eat about 1 pound of fish per day
and are the most destructive birds
to inland aquaculture, especially
catfish production. A recent study
estimated that the damage they
cause to catfish production is $10
million to $13 million annually in
Mississippi..

Additionally,
potential losses may be higher than
one would estimate by consumption
alone because birds often
wound fish that they do not eat.
The importance of birds as vectors
of fish diseases has yet to be determined.

I heard a sound in the sky two nights ago as I was putting up another scarecrow on my Dad's pond, and when I looked over my shoulder I saw El Cormorante numbering 49.

I chill went down my spine...

I'm not kidding.

2 shook hands with a 220 swift this week! I have seen HUNDREDS, at daylight coming off roost, on both Calavaras and Brauning Lakes south of San Antonio. This would be 20-25 miles north of our place.

I'm not suggesting that anyone try to attract cormorants to their pond.


ewest's research shows that cormorants eat about a pound of fish per day. I don't believe cormorants can eat fish much larger than a pound. Poachers will usually target the largest fish they can catch, and they will certainly take more than one pound.

Poachers often damage your property besides taking fish, the birds only want some fish.


That's my point Sunil, we can't stop them from preying on our fish, so I'm trying to understand all of the implications. If each bird can eat about a pound of fish then we roughly know what is at stake when 2 dozen of them land on our ponds. I'm not saying to let them do whatever they want to, but the fact remains they MAY BE a good tool to aid in reducing the population in an overcrowded pond.


I accept that cormorants can do damage to the balance of fish in ponds, but I maintain that in some cases their predation can improve a fishery. There would be several factors involved including the number of birds, the duration of their stay, the degree of fish overpopulation, etc. It all depends.


Very true Sunil, and your statement gets to the heart of my point. The easiest and most efficient approach will always be the one that harmonizes with the effects of mother nature on our ponds.

Again, I'm not saying that we shouldn't discourage cormorants from our ponds, but at least we can understand the true nature of their influence. I don't believe they can eat our large fish, and we've seen evidence that each bird will only eat about one pound on any given day.

At one pound per day, 50-100 cormorants would have eaten 50-100 pounds of fish. They might have been at our pond for a day and a half, I don't know. If they ate small BG, that would have been good. I'm afraid they might have hit the 10-15 inch SMB pretty hard but who knows. This is definitely a case where this might have been a very good thing for the lake or a moderately bad thing. I doubt that I will ever know.