Little Pied Cormorant

About the Little Pied Cormorant

The little pied cormorant, little shag or little pied shag (Microcarbo melanoleucos) (Māori: kawaupaka) is a common species of Australasian waterbird, found around the coasts, islands, estuaries, and inland waters of Australia, New Guinea, New Zealand, Timor-Leste and Indonesia, and around the islands of the south-western Pacific and the subantarctic. It is a small short-billed cormorant usually black above and white below with a yellow bill and small crest, although a mostly black white-throated form predominates in New Zealand. Three subspecies are recognised. Until recently, most authorities referred to this species as Phalacrocorax melanoleucos.

The species is known as the little pied cormorant in Australia, and as the little shag or by the Māori name of kawaupaka in New Zealand. The term white-throated shag is also reserved for the melanistic form there. The little pied cormorant was originally described by French naturalist Louis Pierre Vieillot in 1817. In 1931, American ornithologist James Lee Peters was the first to consider this in a separate genus along with the pygmy cormorant (M. pygmaeus), little cormorant (M. niger), and the long-tailed cormorant (M. africanus... Wikipedia →