Birds of the World is the best source for international birds I've found, but its article on the "Great Cormorant" really only focuses on the nominate subspecies Phalacrocorax carbo carbo, also known as the Atlantic cormorant and the article did not include illustrations or a range map. I did a post on this subspecies on September 16, 2018 for great cormorants I saw off Cape Breton, Nova Scotia, Canada. There are other subspecies, which I felt Wikipedia covered better, including what is known as the Continental cormorant, P. c. sinensis, which is found across Eurasia, from inland western Europe to India, to northeast Russia and northeast China, to the Korean Peninsula, south to Turkey, central Asia and north Mongolia, and separated, but found in south Cambodia, south Vietnam and northeast Borneo. It is about 10% smaller than the nominate subspecies I saw in Nova Scotia. I saw one of the Continental cormorants in Nuremberg, Germany in May 2025, standing on the pylon of a bridge over the Pegnitz River. It was quite close and I got a great look at it.
I saw another in a lake below the Amber Fort in Jaipur, India in December 2024.
That green eye in the first picture is really creepy.
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