Little Cormorant

How to identify

Field marks

1. Glossy black overall in the breeding season, with white spots on the face
2. Breeding adult has a short crest on the back of the head
3. Non-breeding plumage brownish, sometimes with a small white patch on the throat
4. Head less pointed and bill shorter than in Indian Cormorant

Male, female and young

Sexes indistinguishable in the field; male often larger. Non-breeding birds and juveniles are brownish.

Voice

More vocal near nests and roosts: low roars and growls, as well as “kok-kok-kok”.

Similar species

Pygmy Cormorant

Difficult to distinguish from Pygmy Cormorant in the field and sometimes treated as the same species; west of the Indus Valley, this species may overlap in range with vagrant Pygmy Cormorants.

Where and when it's recorded

Little Cormorant has been recorded at 560 of the 8,171 birding hotspots we track, in 15 countries and regions.

Records by month Northern Hemisphere

Where it's recorded most

1. Kanha NP – Mukki ZoneIndia5,796 records
2. Changaram Wetlands – EzhupunnaIndia4,009 records
3. Bharatpur – Keoladeo Ghana NPIndia4,004 records

Countries and regions with the most records

IndiaThailandSri LankaCambodiaBangladeshNepalPakistanVietnam

eBird records via GBIF up to 2024-12-31. A record means someone listed it; more records partly mean more birders, not more birds.

About

The little cormorant (Microcarbo niger) is a member of the cormorant family of seabirds. Slightly smaller than the Indian cormorant it lacks a peaked head and has a shorter beak. It is widely distributed across the Indian subcontinent and extends east to Java, where it is sometimes called the Javanese cormorant.

Excerpt from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0 · authors · Read more on Wikipedia

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