BTO - Breeding Birds of the Wider Countryside: Cormorant

CORMORANT
Phalacrocorax carbo

• Population
changes

• Productivity
trends

• Additional
information

Conservation listings

Europe: no SPEC category (favourable conservation status in Europe, not concentrated in Europe)
UK: amber (breeding localised, >20% of European population in winter)

Long-term trend

UK: increase

UK population size

9,018 pairs in 1998–2002 (Mitchell et al. 2004: APEP06, 9,100 including Channel Islands BiE04)

Status summary

Cormorants, historically an almost exclusively coastal-breeding seabird in the UK, have established dozens of inland breeding colonies in eastern and central England since 1980 (Rehfisch et al. 1999). The results from the Seabird 2000 census of Britain and Ireland show a 15% increase in the population between 1985–88 and 1998–2002, with substantial increases coastally in England and Scotland and inland in eastern England (Mitchell et al. 2004). There were 35 inland colonies holding 15% of the total British and Irish population. BBS indicates a shallow increase in Cormorant numbers. The species has recently been moved from the green to the amber list, for reasons unconnected with its UK trend.

Population changes

Productivity trends

Productivity information is not currently available for this species

Additional information


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This report should be cited as: Baillie, S.R., Marchant, J.H., Crick, H.Q.P., Noble, D.G., Balmer, D.E., Coombes, R.H., Downie, I.S., Freeman, S.N., Joys, A.C., Leech, D.I., Raven, M.J., Robinson, R.A. and Thewlis, R.M. (2006) Breeding Birds in the Wider Countryside: their conservation status 2005. BTO Research Report No. 435. BTO, Thetford. (http://www.bto.org/birdtrends) Pages maintained by Susan Waghorn and Iain Downie: Last updated 19 May, 2006