FreeLists / tn-bird / [TN-Bird] Re: [butternuts] cormorant expulsion

[Charlie <cmmbirds@xxxxxxxxx>]

Michael,

Great-horned are significantly more of a threat to cormorants than
eagles!  There is a long-studied cormorant population in the Isles of
Shoals, 8 miles off the coast of Maine and New Hampshire.  I spent a
few summers at the marine biology lab there.  On occasion an eagle
will come through, and it doesn't seem to cause any fuss.  But
friends who have worked with the Puffin Project, and with some listed
terns on colonies closer to the mainland (Great-horneds apparently
won't cross 8 miles of ocean) tell me of the ruckus a single owl will
make of a cormorant colony, not to mention the disaster they can
bring upon a colony of smaller birds like puffins or terns.  


Charlie


--- michael sylva <mtnsylva@xxxxxxx> wrote:

> We'd been seeing about 150 double-crested cormorants at dusk in a
> stand of eastern cottonwoods east of the RR crossing into the
> Rankin WMA in Cocke county.  Yesterday, at the usual time, there
> were no cormorants, but one bald eagle in a snag at the center of
> the stand.  Another immature eagle was perched on riverbank
> cottonwood, a couple of hundred feet away.  There were also 2
> ospreys perched in the area, as there had been when the cormorants
> roosted there. I don't think the eagles are any more of a threat
> than the ospreys are to the cormorants, although I've read that
> eagles will rob fish from ospreys.  >> Different interspecies
> tolerances for different birds; we've also seen an eagle clear out
> an islet occupied by a flock of white ibises at Ding Darling Refuge
> in Florida.  Maybe an eagle dummy would be more effective as a bird
> deterrent than those synthetic great horned owls.  >> BTW, we heard
> two live GHOs after sunset at Rankin last night.
> 
> Michael Sledjeski & Leslie Gibbens 


=====
**************************************************
Charlie Muise, Naturalist near
Great Smoky Mountains National Park

"Growth for the sake of growth is the ideology of cancer."  -Edward Abbey
**************************************************


                
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