Spectacled Cormorant
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| Spectacled Cormorant Conservation status: Extinct (1850) | ||||||||||||||
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| Phalacrocorax perspicillatus Pallas,, 1811 |
The Spectacled Cormorant (Phalacrocorax perspicillatus) is an extinct marine bird of the cormorant family of seabirds that inhabited a few islands at the western end of the Aleutian Islands.
The species was first identified by Georg Steller in 1741 on Vitus Bering's Second Kamchatka Expedition. He described the bird as large, clumsy and almost flightless, and wrote "they weighed 12 - 14 pounds, so that one single bird was sufficient for three starving men."
Apart from the fact that it fed on fish, almost nothing else is known about this bird. The population declined quickly when further visitors to the area collected the birds for food and feathers. It is believed the Spectacled Cormorant became extinct in 1850.
This bird is also known as Pallas's Cormorant.