Abstract
Centre d’Etudes Biologiques de Chize´, Beauvoir-sur-Niort(Received 24 June 2006; initial acceptance 10 August 2006;final acceptance 24 November 2006; published online 15 August 2007; MS. number: SC-1297R)Wing spreading is a general behaviour in cormorants, andhas been described worldwide in most species (Orta 1992).Yet, this behaviour is missing (with some exceptions, seebelow) in the species belonging to the so-called ‘blue-eyed shag complex’ (Bernstein & Maxson 1981), hereafterreferred to as ‘the complex’, a group of cormorants livingon the coasts and islands of the waters of the SouthernOcean between roughly 40 S and 70 S latitude (Patagonia,Antarctic Peninsula, subAntarctic Islands, New Zealand)and comprising 13 species that have close morphologicalsimilarities (Siegel-Causey 1988).The following observation is an example of what is veryrarely seen in blue-eyed shags. A wing-spreading behav-iour was observed in an adult Kerguelen shag, Phalacro-corax verrucosus, on 29 December 2005. This behaviourwas noticed on the coast of Stoll Island (49 26
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