I recently confirmed that all the sightings I had in Cornwall that I thought were cormorants were actually shags. They are hard to tell apart--even the RSPB says so in the link!--and because I couldn't get very close-up shots of them, it made it even harder for me to tell them apart. But after doing some reading and asking for help on the UK bird ID group in Facebook, it seems that if you see it on the coast, it's more likely to be a shag and in the inland areas, a cormorant. And while my photos aren't good, one of the most telling differences is the beak and head shape, the shag's beak being thinner and a bit shorter and the forehead going more up in a straight line at first than curving back from the beak. So I realised that not only were my Land's End sightings shags, but so were what I thought were cormorants in Fowey. I had deleted the phots from my hard drive but not yet my camera with the Fowey ones, so I've gone back and recovered those! These aren't great photos of them, but maybe you'll spot some differences of your own if you compare these to my earlier post of cormorants from some months ago. The juveniles are brown, so you'll see some youngsters in these photos, too.
Now that I've learned that I did, indeed, see shags, I was also interested to learn that they are on the RSPB's red list, meaning their populations in the UK are threatened and seem to be declining. In that case, it makes it all the more special to be able to see these birds; I hope that they don't become extinct in Britain, but if they do, I'll feel that it was a privilege to have been able to see them while I'm here.
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