So I'm in California on a wee trip, and I pick up a second-hand copy of the Sibley Western North America field guide in a bookshop in Berkeley (along with a bunch of other natural history guides) before heading down the coast today and stopping off at Point Lobos State Reserve. Amongst other things I see lots of cormorants on the rocks with really obvious blue throat patches. Wow, nice! The British cormorants I am familiar with only ever have white throat patches. Blue is much better and very cool. Weirdly, however, I can't find any cormorants described in the guide that have blue throat patches...
I ask the ranger and he tells me that these are Brandt's cormorants. The Sibley book doesn't mention (or illustrate) the blue throat patch at all however, which (at least from my perspective, in the situation I was in) is by far the most obvious feature of these birds, hence my confusion in trying to identify them.
OK, perhaps most sightings of these birds are when they are not in breeding plumage, and perhaps in the Western U.S. any sort of "pale" throat patch is diagnostic of Brandt's cormorant, but you would think that the guide could at least mention this rather obvious feature... Or is there something I am missing?
I ask the ranger and he tells me that these are Brandt's cormorants. The Sibley book doesn't mention (or illustrate) the blue throat patch at all however, which (at least from my perspective, in the situation I was in) is by far the most obvious feature of these birds, hence my confusion in trying to identify them.
OK, perhaps most sightings of these birds are when they are not in breeding plumage, and perhaps in the Western U.S. any sort of "pale" throat patch is diagnostic of Brandt's cormorant, but you would think that the guide could at least mention this rather obvious feature... Or is there something I am missing?