Double-Crested Cormorant in Yellowstone National Park
Double-crested Cormorant in Yellowstone National Park
On July 20, 1928, Mr. C. Brooke Worth, of St. David's, Pennsylvania, visited Molly Island in the southern part of Yellowstone Lake, Yellowstone National Park, and there found the nest of a Double-crested Cormorant (Phalacrcorax auritus auritus), containing two long, dirty, whitish eggs. These eggs were about two inches long, and originally there had been five eggs in the set. The nest was large and deeply pitted, and made mostly of the shed primary wing feathers of California Gulls. It was placed on the ground comparatively near to the nests of the many California Gulls nesting on that islet (see Skinner, Condor, XIX, 1917, pp. 177-182). One of the birds was seen swimming on the lake at some little distance out from Molly Island.
This is certainly the first record for both the bird and the nest in Yellowstone National Park. A. A. Saunders, in his Birds of Montana (Pacific Coast Avifauna No. 14, 1921, p. 31) lists a half dozen occurrences of this bird in Montana, and W. C. Knight gives one or two records for Wyoming in his Birds of Wyoming. With the establishment in late years of reclamation reservoirs, with the usual drowned trees therein, records in Montana and Wyoming are becoming more numerous; but even so, this record for the Yellowstone is a noteworthy one.
M. P. Skinner
Long Beach, California, January 25, 1929
