Phalacrocorax carbo
Silhouette: Ferran Sayol · PhyloPic
In 3 days ~40% in a week ~70%
The great cormorant (Phalacrocorax carbo), also known as just cormorant in Britain, as black shag or kawau in New Zealand, formerly also known as the great black cormorant across the Northern Hemisphere, the black cormorant in Australia, and the large cormorant in India, is a widespread member of the cormorant family of seabirds. It breeds in much of the Old World, Australasia, and the Atlantic coast of North America.
The great cormorant was formally described in 1758 by the Swedish naturalist Carl Linnaeus in the tenth edition of his Systema Naturae under the binomial name Pelecanus carbo. Linnaeus specified the type location as "Europe", but this was restricted to the "rock-nesting form of the north Atlantic Ocean" by the German ornithologist Ernst Hartert in 1920. The great cormorant is now one of 12 species placed in the genus Phalacrocorax that was introduced in 1760 by the French zoologist Mathurin Jacques Brisson. The genus name is Latinised Ancient Greek, from φαλακρός (phalakros, "bald") and κόραξ (korax, "raven"); the specific epithet carbo is Latin for "charcoal".
Six subspecies are accepted. These are listed below with their breeding ranges... Wikipedia →
| # | City | Country | Daily sighting probability |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Dakar | 🇸🇳 Senegal | |
| 2 | Tokyo | 🇯🇵 Japan | |
| 3 | Liverpool | 🇬🇧 United Kingdom | |
| 4 | Nagoya | 🇯🇵 Japan | |
| 5 | Osaka | 🇯🇵 Japan | |
| 6 | Turin | 🇮🇹 Italy | |
| 7 | Fukuoka | 🇯🇵 Japan | |
| 8 | Hiroshima | 🇯🇵 Japan | |
| 9 | Rotterdam [The Hague] | 🇳🇱 Netherlands | |
| 10 | Copenhagen | 🇩🇰 Denmark |
With luck
About 10% of wildlife watchers report a Great Cormorant sighting in Minneriya National Park on a given day, based on 87 verified sightings from GBIF citizen-science data from 2019 to 2026. It is the 83rd most-seen of the 155 birds we can rate there. Over three days the chance rises to about 40%, and over a week to about 70%, if each day is a fresh chance.
June and July
In those months about 30% of wildlife watchers report a Great Cormorant in Minneriya National Park on a given day, against about 10% in September–October and December–May, the lowest months. Those are among Minneriya National Park's driest months, with about 30 mm of rain a month against 340 mm in November.
Between 10 am and 1 pm
Across all the parks we cover, that three-hour window holds the most Great Cormorant sightings with a recorded time, and about 9 in 10 of them come between 6 am and 6 pm: it is a daytime animal.
48th of 100
Of the 100 parks where we can rate Great Cormorant sightings, Minneriya National Park ranks 48th at about 10%. The best odds are in Lake Nakuru National Park (Kenya, about 70%), Wadden Sea National Park (Germany, about 60%) and Keoladeo National Park (India, about 60%). All parks ranked.
GBIF citizen-science records
It is estimated from how often the Great Cormorant is recorded against all the birds logged in Minneriya National Park (87 verified sightings from 2019 to 2026), calibrated against known sighting rates. Figures are rounded to the nearest 10% because citizen-science data supports honest approximations, not decimals, and months with records from fewer than five people show "—". How it works.
