ID This water bird please

Stoner

Have seen this guy a few times on the canal,bigwing span smaller than a herrons. Nearly all black, great diver stays under the water for ages. What is he please.?

Will add photo tomorrow.

mgwhelan

sounds like a cormorant.

leonvdn

Likely great cormorant
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Cormorant

cscook

I just uploaded a video of a cormorant in the Video sticky thread the other day. You could take a look and see. Certainly they do stay underwater for ages - hard to figure out where they're going to surface. They look black, but in good light there's a brown sheen to the feathers - they can be quite beautiful.

Stoner

sorry for the delay. I've seen cormorant at sea many times, in fact a couple of us boardsies were in the west of Ireland at the weekend and flagged 5 or 6, they they just seem like different birds, i guess how they behave on the canal compared to the sea would be very different, but even the flight pattern looks different, and i never noticed the colour of the bill /beak on the ones at sea, maybe they were just too far away.

sorry about the fuzzy pics.

Stoner

yeah you guys are correct, it's him alright never noticed the yellow bit at sea. Thanks