Brandt's Cormorant

Brandt's Cormorant
Point Joe, Pebble Beach, California, USA
October 2016
Member of the Cormorant Family
§A Swim of Cormorants§

~true bird fact~ Impressive divers, they are built for the strenuous task of undersea hunting. They can dive up to 120 feet deep to seek their preferred prey of rockfish and pacific herring.

Has a cruel-sounding laugh
Mysteriously knowledgeable about narrow subjects
Quick to disengage with people who disappoint him
Well developed palate


Oh hey Amateurnithologist, who's this Brandt guy??

I'm glad you asked, very few people would actually care about that. You, reader, are a special flower. Anyway, you've given me an opportunity for another..

Naturalist Profile!

Johann Friedrich von Brandt

1802 - 1879

Like many of our eponymous naturalist, von Brandt was a bit of a renaissance man. In addition to his bird work, he wrote about medicinal plants, specialized in beetles and millipedes, and might actually be most well regarded as a paleontologist. Although he was German born and educated, he emigrated to Russian in his early 30's to found and direct the Zoological Museum of St. Petersberg. His description of this Cormorant came from museum specimens that had been collected by Russian explorers on trips to the Pacific coast, but never previously identified. He also is credited with the Spectacled Eider and Red-legged Kittiwake. So if either of those are your favorite birds, this is your guy, I guess. His wikipedia page is very dry and more in-german than any other english wikipedia page I've ever seen. My guess is a dry wikipedia page is a sign of a basically moral and drama-free life, so good for him. He also has a bat and a hedgehog named after him