Cormorant or Shag?

Am I at least right in assuming it's either a Cormorant or a Shag?

Or is the pic so bad that the bird is completely unidentifiable? :(

Unknown said:

Am I at least right in assuming it's either a Cormorant or a Shag? Or is the pic so bad that the bird is completely unidentifiable? :(

I think it would take another bird of the same species to say which of the two it is , but I'm fairly sure it's one or the other :-) I think Cormorants are more common than Shags if that's any help.

It's definitely one or the other but from that view it would be very hard to be certain as to which.

I've lightened and cropped your image but even so hard to see any useful features. It does look quite brown and neck fairly thick which might favour Cormorant but I wouldn't put my mortgage on it. Also, I think Shags are mainly winter visitors to that coast but I could be wrong and there are often exceptions.

Shags are commoner and breed at Bempton in decent numbers. However, so do a few Cormorants and I wouldn't happily assign this to one or the other.

Over the other side of the country on Liverpool Bay we get lots of Cormorants but I hardly see any Shag sightings reported.

Thanks all, really appreciate your help. As said above the pic was taken on a horrendous day in late August, when it was literally a battle to stay upright in the wind. In that context I guess I was lucky to get any sort of shot at all, but I had to try because this was just about the only bird I saw that wasn't a gannet!

I guess the next step is to take a print up to Bempton next time I visit, and see if the staff can make anything of it.

Unknown said:

I guess the next step is to take a print up to Bempton next time I visit, and see if the staff can make anything of it.

You could try, but to be honest I don't think that anyone could say which of the two this is with any certainty - if I were you I'd put it down as "Cormorant or Shag" and then forget about it!   ;o)

Got to agree with Roy on this one ,we all have birds that drop into the "could have been a " file never to be i.d.'d

Thanks again for your advice. I'll tag it as a Cormoshag :)

In reply to see gull. This may not identify your bird but if its still of any interest or use to you. I have learned a lot about this species of bird from observation. From your photo its impossible to tell the difference as the tell tale markings are on the face, beak and chest, all of which are not visible from your photo. I encountered this bird when I was walking along the shore on a remote beach on the north west shoreline and the tide was on the turn and I tried to get close to get a photo but it dived into the sea before I got close enough and I could see that it starts to fish on the turn of the tide . I observed it fishing always solitary in exactly the same place over the next several months and it must have worked out I wasnt a threat and let me get close, I was in awe of it especially when it was stood proudly with its wings outstretched it looked magnificent and being born in Liverpool I know that the mythical Liver Bird was modelled on the Cormorant Bird. This one flew inland and followed it to a reservoir, where I found where it was nested and also noticed it was fishing in fresh water too, l saw it had a mate and they were the only two birds of this kind within several miles, so deduced since they always appear to be solitary and not in a colony and that they had white feathers on the cheeks and stripe of yellow on top of the white out towards the beak. I identified it as a Cormorant Bird not a Shag, since a Shag has no white feathers on its face although it does have the yellow flash on each side of the beak but aside from that it is always all black, whereas Cormorants have the white cheeks and/or a white chest and from my observations appear to prefer to be solitary where shags are numerous and colonial. That is if indeed you are still interested several years later. I only posted this because I thought your post was Jan this year since when viewing this page in portrait mode on a smartphone the year is not visible.  Ah well better late than never :)