Assuming these are grey squirrels and not red (which are a protected species under the Wildlife & Countryside Act 1981), you can legally use the air weapon on your private land for vermin control. Cormorants prey on perch, walleye, small-mouth bass, northern pike, sunfish, bluegill, crappie, and other small fish depending on the cormorant’s location. Where cormorant numbers are high, they can negatively affect terrestrial habitats by chemical and physical means through corrosive acidic guano, and stripping/breaking tree branches. Cormorants eat on average one pound of fish per day in their adult lives. Both parents need to tend double-crested cormorant hatchlings, feeding them, shading them, bringing them water as well as food. Permits cost $12 and allow holders or their designated agents to kill cormorants on specific tracts of land. It is one of six species of cormorants in North America and one of 38 species worldwide. If you’ve spent any amount of time on any of North Carolina’s coastal waters, you are familiar with the long lines of some very dark colored water birds. Government Proposes Hunting Season for Double-Crested Cormorants Populations of double-crested cormorants appear to be increasing in number and distribution across Ontario's shorelines. By Fred Bonner. Their go-to tool: a muted .22-caliber rifle, allowing them to shoot birds from afar and limit their disturbance. South Carolina hunters killed 11,653 double-crested cormorants on Lake Marion and Lake Moultrie in one month this winter in an effort to reduce the number of the fish-eating birds on the lakes. Ponds are also shallow which make the minnows easy for cormorants to catch. I read a cormorant consumes a pound of fish per day. Cormorants and other waterbirds such as pelicans and herons can have adverse impacts on fish populations when fish are concentrated in artificially high numbers - conditions such as those found at fish farms, hatcheries, and sites where hatchery-reared fish are released. The anhinga (/ æ n ˈ h ɪ ŋ ɡ ə /; Anhinga anhinga), sometimes called snakebird, darter, American darter, or water turkey, is a water bird of the warmer parts of the Americas.The word anhinga comes from the Brazilian Tupi language and means devil bird or snake bird. Posted By: rickym Cormorants - 01/31/19 07:33 PM. The Service has previously taken action to protect fish in these situations. South Carolina hunters killed 11,653 double-crested cormorants on Lake Marion and Lake Moultrie in one month this winter in an effort to reduce the number of the fish-eating birds on the lakes. The double-crested cormorant is a goose-sized waterbird native to North America. However, discharging the firearm in your garden could still cause you … A double-crested cormorant, illuminated by the morning sun, perches on a snag just above the slow but steady flow of the Kankakee River. You need a wildlife licence if you want to shoot cormorants for the purpose of preventing serious damage to your inland fishery in Northern Ireland. I see they are arriving in large numbers for the winter. Dealers are allowed to shoot cormorants at their facilities under the Aquaculture Depredation Order when this becomes an issue. Just unreal how many there are down there. So why is it illegal to shoot them? "We need to learn how these growing populations are connected to the landscape, their migration patterns and what impact – if any – their increasing numbers are having on other wildlife, including area fish." They are fun to shoot. They fly straight line at a cool 45 yrd altitude. In Texas, the Double-crested Cormorant is primarily a wintering species with peak numbers (50,000-90,000) occurring October through March along the coast and inland, mainly associated with large reservoirs, mostly in the eastern two-thirds of the state (east of the 100 th meridian). Their efficient hunting is due to specialized heron-like foraging techniques: a brief, short-distance chase and/or rapid neck extension to capture prey that is within eyesight or flushed from hiding at short range. Fish consumed are less than 6"s long. "On the big public reservoirs that have good prey populations, we haven't experienced declines in fisheries, even though you see cormorants at nearly all of them," Terre said. Young double-crested cormorants hatch unfeathered, so ugly that only a parent can love them––which cormorant mothers and fathers do, protecting their young from the elements. Cormorants eat primarily fish less than six inches. If you need to control cormorants due to depredation, you will now have to apply with the USFWS Permits Office (505-248-7882) for a new individual Migratory Bird Depredation Permit (FWS Form 3-200-13). Pic below 2006, pond by my moms house, me and my son catching a lot of black bass and noticed many had these wounds in the back of the tail, had no idea what it was and finally figured it out it was cormorants. Go down to Falcon Lake and you can see waves of them numbering into the thousands.