New Zealand king shag

For the species from South America, Antarctica and southern ocean islands that sometimes is known as the king shag, see imperial shag.
New Zealand king shag
Australian pied cormorant (on the left)
and New Zealand king shag (on the right)
(Illustration by John Gerrard Keulemans)
Scientific classification
Kingdom: Animalia
Phylum: Chordata
Class: Aves
Order: Suliformes
Family: Phalacrocoracidae
Genus: Phalacrocorax
Species: P. carunculatus
Binomial name
Phalacrocorax carunculatus
Gmelin, 1789

The New Zealand king shag (Phalacrocorax carunculatus), also known as the rough-faced shag or king shag, is a rare bird endemic to New Zealand.

Description

It is a large (76 cm long, 2.5 kg in weight) black and white cormorant with pink feet. White patches on the wings appear as bars when the wings are folded. Yellow-orange swellings (caruncles) are found above the base of the bill. The grey gular pouch is reddish in the breeding season. A blue eye-ring indicates its kinship with the other blue-eyed shags. They can be seen from the Cook Strait ferries in Queen Charlotte Sound opposite the beginning of the Tory Channel.

Habitat

New Zealand king shags live in the coastal waters of the Marlborough Sounds where they are known to breed only on rocky islets at four small sites.[2]

References

  1. ↑ BirdLife International (2012). "Phalacrocorax carunculatus". IUCN Red List of Threatened Species. Version 2013.2. International Union for Conservation of Nature. Retrieved 26 November 2013.
  2. ↑ BirdLife International. (2012). Important Bird Areas factsheets: Duffers Reef. Sentinel Rock. Trio Islands. White Rocks. Downloaded from http://www.birdlife.org on 2012-02-03.

External links

This article is issued from Wikipedia - version of the Tuesday, January 26, 2016. The text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share Alike but additional terms may apply for the media files.