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Unusual winged visitor makes a stop in the Shuswap

The bird’s few inland nesting colonies are both hundreds of kilometres away
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Photographer Kelly Dick captured an uncommon visit to Salmon Arm by a Double-Crested Cormorant. (Kelly Dick Photo)

Photographer Kelly Dick found an uncommon visitor to the Salmon Arm in the viewfinder of her camera.

Dick photographed a Double-Crested Cormorant perched in a tree above McGuire Lake. At first, she thought the large bird was a Blue Heron but then she zoomed in and saw the cormorant’s bright orange chin and realized she was seeing a much rarer bird.

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The cormorant Dick photographed is an infrequent but not unique visitor to the bird sanctuary along Salmon Arm’s foreshore. The cormorants are primarily coastal birds but nesting colonies exist in a few of B.C.’s large interior lakes. Colonies have only been confirmed by the Atlas of the Breeding Birds of British Columbia in Stum Lake in the Cariboo and Leach Lake in the Kootenay River valley; both are far from the Shuswap.



jim.elliot@saobserver.net

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Jim Elliot

About the Author: Jim Elliot

I’m a B.C. transplant here in Whitehorse at The News telling stories about the Yukon's people, environment, and culture.
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