Tucker Swamp _ Pied Cormorant

Tucker Swamp is on the northern edge of Dutson Downs and is only accessible by boat. Last Thursday Pete took Deb Sullivan, Abigail Barenblitt and me there to check out the Pied Cormorant breeding platform. We had last visited three months ago and it looked like things were starting to get "active". Well, things have certainly been active. We counted at least 70 juvenile Pied Cormorants chicks and about 200 in total.

Here is an image of the platform from about 300 metres.

We were able to get a bit closer without disturbing the residents unnecessarily and I took plenty of shots including several bursts of images from one end of the platform to the other using a 300mm lens plus 2X teleconverter. At home utilising the computing power of a Mac using Lightroom, I was able to create two panoramic images using 15 images each time.

Pied Cormorant Phalacrocorax varius

Here are some closeups using the crop tool in Lightroom. Note the breeding flush of the skin at the commissure of the jaws in the first two images and the drab juvenile plumage of 17 or so young in the last image.