Return of the Great Cormorant. The only island in the southern part of Baikal

Recently the following news appeared:

“According to the press service of the government of the Republic of Buryatia, in the northeast of Baikal the number of seals and cormorants has increased greatly..... As fishermen note, each cormorant eats up to 2 kg of fish per day, this is thousands of tons per season. “More than 10 thousand cormorants fly into the bay and into the Barguzin Valley, soon there will be no fish in Chivyrkuisky Bay, we can no longer fish there. The Barguzin River, which opened up from ice, became black from the cormorant, which eats fish going to spawn. The area is groaning,” say the fishermen. ...

Fishermen also complain about the seal, which has multiplied greatly and is a big competitor to humans.

…»

The famous researcher and defender of Baikal Oleg Kirillovich Gusev in 1980 published an article “The Great Cormorant on Baikal” (“Hunting and Game Management”, No. 3-4), dedicated to the unusual fate of this bird. Back in the 19th century, the cormorant disappeared in the south of the Great Siberian Lake. Its numerous large colonies remained in the middle part of Lake Baikal - in the area of ​​the Small Sea (west coast) and Chivyrkuisky Bay (eastern coast). But in the post-war years they began to “melt before our eyes.” And already in the 1960s, only isolated cases of nesting were observed. In subsequent years, single birds and small groups of birds appeared occasionally, instilling hope in the hearts of nature lovers for their revival. The species was included in the Red Books of Buryatia and Irkutsk region. Ornithologists regularly raised the issue of implementing projects to return it to Baikal.

Visiting Baikal in 1975-2000, I almost physically felt the loss of this bird. Empty cormorant nests were preserved, the bird lived in stories, in the names of islands and capes. But it was not possible to see her “live.” And suddenly on July 3, 2002 - a meeting of a pair on the island of Yedor (the second name is “White”). And in July 2006 on the island of Shargadagon I already observed about 40 cormorants. S.V. Pyzhyanov discovered nests with chicks here in August. After about a 40-year break, cormorants have nested on Lake Baikal again!

Shargadagon Island

And every year there were more and more of them. In 2012, there were already 600-700 pairs in the Maloye More area; the autumn population reached approximately 3 thousand individuals. On the eastern coast of Baikal, the species began nesting in the same years. Its original element has returned to the Baikal ecosystem! As the numbers of most of our migratory birds continue to decline, the story of the great cormorant is a rare exception.

By 2010, a cormorant colony had formed on the top of Yedor Island

In my opinion, the return of the cormorant has added beauty to the Baikal shores. Silhouettes of black birds, contrasting with herring gulls, brought to life the familiar outlines of rocks and islands. Birds sitting with their wings open to “dry” are especially picturesque.

Photo from the site “Nature of Baikal”

Why did the cormorant disappear from Lake Baikal? In the hungry 1940-1950s, eggs were collected on the islands. This affected cormorants and gulls. Some of the cormorant nests were located on rocky cliffs accessible only to climbers. However, the birds disappeared there. Oleg Kirillovich assumed the influence of the increased disturbance factor caused by the appearance of motor boats. There were hypotheses about the influence of competition with seagulls and the deterioration of the food supply (due to overfishing of omul). As if in response to all this, the cormorant returned to Baikal under a disproportionately more powerful disturbance factor than in the 1950s (the huge current fleet of boats, boats, and jet skis). Despite a higher number of gulls than 50 years ago and even poorer fish resources.

I believe that the disappearance of the cormorant was primarily related to the situation in the South Asian wintering grounds. In the 1950s, the numbers of a number of Siberian migratory birds fell sharply. We are talking about teal, geese, and swans. It is known that in China, mass procurement of wintering “game” at that time was carried out even with the help of explosions. Lines of dynamite charges were installed on low supports along the coasts where waterfowl accumulated...

But why did the cormorant return? Some colleagues cite the reason for the drying out of reservoirs in Dauria (Torey Lakes), Northern China and Western Mongolia. Probably forgetting that 40 years included more than one cycle of drying out and watering (for the Torey lakes it is approximately 12-15 years). Most likely, both the disappearance and return of the cormorant to Lake Baikal is due to factors that acted during the wintering grounds. Perhaps it was the cessation of barbarian fishing in China that was the reason for the rapid increase in the number of the species in the Amur basin (which I happened to observe in the 1990s), and the “youth” settling from there successfully “colonized” the empty Baikal. The rapid increase in numbers in 2007-2012 was due not to reproduction, but to the “influx” of new birds.

Yes, there are indeed fewer and fewer fish on Lake Baikal. For example: “In 2010, approximately 2.7 million omul individuals entered the Upper Angara; in 2013, this figure dropped to 1.1 million (http://newsbabr.com/?IDE=123924 ).

But should this be surprising? Poaching has been flourishing everywhere for a long time. However, many legal fishermen fish barbarously, using fine-mesh nets, killing spawners going to spawn. Huge areas of the bottom of the Baikal bays are littered with abandoned nets (made in China), which continue to kill fish. Artificial fish farming has declined sharply.

The cormorant spends only 5 months a year on Lake Baikal. Its catch is a drop in the bucket compared to the volume of net fishing that takes place all year round! This bird lived here for a long time, but the number of fish did not decrease. By the way, large numbers of cormorants and seals die in fishing nets.

Everywhere you can come across seals that died in nets and were thrown away as unnecessary

The attitude towards the cormorant on Lake Baikal is a fresh example of the de-ecologicalization of society. Already in the 1990s, the teaching of ecology in the Russian Federation was sharply reduced, and in schools, universities, and in the media (especially on TV), environmental propaganda was completely replaced by the propaganda of “consumerism.” And now both fishermen (as well as all other “consumers of natural resources”) and officials, including high-level ones, are equally environmentally illiterate! The above note is a clear confirmation of this.

Everything is relative. Since January 1, 2014, all types and methods of hunting have been banned in Mongolia, with the exception of falconry. Even a wolf! (http://valeriymaleev.livejournal.com/92963.html It would seem that in a country where cattle breeding is one of the main occupations of the population, this is impossible. But here you go...

And all because Mongolia is seriously fighting for its ecological image, developing genuine ecological tourism. It is taking measures to ensure that wild animals - an important ecotourism resource - become more numerous, and their “wariness” towards humans decreases.

From Baikal to the Mongolian border is “a stone’s throw”. But it’s as if we live in different worlds. We destroy the fish ourselves, and blame the cormorant and the seal for it. We proclaim the development of ecological tourism as a priority, but in reality we are only engaged in its imitation, which allows us to “make money” in specially protected natural areas. We allocate billions for a special “tourist-recreational type” zone on Lake Baikal, but do nothing to ensure that tourists can see nature filled with “wild life”. On the contrary, we take up arms against the remaining wild birds and animals.

“The head of Buryatia instructed the Ministry of Natural Resources of the republic to develop proposals, involve Buryat scientists in the problem, who should study the consequences of the increase in the number of these animals, and prepare a rationale for solving the problem.” Now all hope lies with scientists. The main thing is that when “mastering the funding” that will be allocated from the budget for the study of this “vitally important” problem, they are guided by environmental interests, and not follow the lead of officials who “pay for the music.” Alas, there are many such cases.

P. S .Academician Ivan Ivanovich (Johann Gottlieb) Georgi, having visited Baikal (1768), wrote about the Barguzin River: “The abundance of fish in the river - sturgeon, pike, burbot, lenok, whitefish, etc., especially omul, at the end of summer attracts Countless flocks of birds come here. The mouth of the river, at least half a mile deep into the bay, was so dotted with cormorants and seagulls that almost the entire surface of the water was covered with them.”

Probably, the bat had just come out of hibernation, so it flew out of its hiding place during daylight hours (sunset at this time in Volgograd occurs around 6 p.m.), was not very active due to the low air temperature, and became relatively easy prey for the hooded crow.

Russian Journal of Ornithology 2016, Volume 25, Express Issue 1274: 1372-1387

Great cormorant Phalacrocorax carbo on Lake Baikal

O.K.Gusev

Second edition. First published in 1980*

The last colony of great cormorants Phalacrocorax carbo on Baikal disappeared about twenty years ago [in the early 1960s], but in ornithological reports today the range of this bird in Eastern Siberia is still depicted as a completely delineated vast area from Baikal in the west to the Amur in the in the east and from the state border in the south to the Barguzin depression in the north.

It is very difficult to believe that this bird has disappeared from Lake Baikal. After all, just recently, cormorants were found here “in such countless flocks as hardly anywhere else on the mainland of the Old World”, nesting “in such masses that the droppings lay in a thick layer on the rocks and its smell carried far away.” They “covered the Selenga and Barguzin bays in thousands,” and even in the mid-thirties of our century they proposed organizing their fishery in order to “give the cities hundreds of additional tons of meat.”

I saw the last cormorant on Lake Baikal in 1971. Since then, none of the ornithologists have seen this bird here.

The cormorant disappeared so quickly and unexpectedly that it remained almost unstudied. We do not have accurate information about its past distribution in the Baikal region, the number of colonies and the size of populations; almost nothing is known about its lifestyle, the role of this species in lake ecosystems, the cycle of matter and energy in Baikal.

The fact that the cormorant was one of the most widespread feathered inhabitants of Baikal did not rush to study its ecology. It seemed that this bird would live here forever, that it could wait, and that it was more important to study and protect rare and endangered animals.

* Gusev O.K. 1980. Great cormorant on Baikal II Hunting and hunting. household 3: 14-17, 4: 14-16.

1372 Rus. ornithol. magazine 2016. Volume 25. Express issue No. 000

The fate of the great cormorant on Lake Baikal is dramatic and instructive.

This prompted us to make an attempt to reconstruct the picture of the past distribution of cormorants on Lake Baikal, bringing together all available materials. Observing the last colony of these birds on Lake Baikal, identifying their former nesting places from the remains of nests, interviewing local residents, studying geographical names on maps of the lake - all this greatly simplifies our task.

But nothing will give a feeling of greater reliability of the facts, nothing will make the picture of the prosperity and death of cormorants on Lake Baikal more truthful and impressive than sincere and artless eyewitness accounts. Scattered in hard-to-find publications, forgotten or generally unknown, the “notes”, “reports” and “reports” of these witnesses of immemorial antiquity are rare and precious. We will use those pages that relate to the topic that interests us, completely preserving their figurative structure and emotional phraseology.

Science will not suffer from this, but readers will benefit.

The first information about the distribution and mass nesting of great cormorants on Lake Baikal was reported by academician I.S. Georgi, a participant in the expedition of the “great northern naturalist” Peter Simon Pallas.

On June 13, 1772, in Buguldeyskaya Bay, as geographer Karl Ritter (1879) testifies, I.S. Georgi “sat down for a swim on a flat-bottomed half-plank, driven by 12 Cossack sailors” and “was the first of the naturalists to swim across the lake,” “only thanks to which the opportunity arose to form a somewhat accurate picture of it.”

From Buguldeika I.S. Georgi headed northeast to the Small Sea and the island of Olkhon. Olkhon amazed him with the “extraordinary abundance of fish and birds,” and the Maloe More with great cormorants. “In the strait called the Thin Sea,” wrote I.S. Georgi, “there are 9 cormorant islands, so named because of the extraordinary number of cormorants found on them. The rocks of these islands are so completely covered with the caustic droppings of cormorants and seagulls that at first glance they seem plastered and bleached.”

Having rounded the lake from the north and moving along its coast to the south, I.S. Georgi reached the Chivirkuysky Bay, where his imagination was again shocked by the incredible variety of water birds that lived there: “From the northern side of the peninsula, seven or eight significant, rocky capes jut out towards the Chivirkuysky Bay with steep banks, from 10 to 20 fathoms in height. Scattered around them are islands consisting of many rocks and underwater stones, such as Ba-gidhir, Kolitka, Kultagoy, mostly consisting of quartz

or feldspar wacke, overgrown only with dried cedars. The tops and branches of these cedars are covered with nests of herons and cormorants; even all the individual cliffs are so covered with the droppings (guano) of these birds that they seem to be painted with white paint. The number of birds here is countless, especially since they are joined by flocks of black-headed gulls that make nests here in the recesses of the rocks... On some islands there are large wild dogs that feed on young fish and the semi-digested food of voracious cormorants... Birds mainly gather here in such countless numbers in schools, like hardly anywhere else on the mainland of the Old World, precisely because the abundance of fish, and especially omuls in these bays, also exceeds all probability.”

The instructions of I.S. Georgi about the nesting of cormorants on the western coast of the lake near the Angi River and on the northeastern coast at Cape Kha-man-Kit are invaluable. I quote them from the text of Karl Ritter in his “Earth Science of Asia”; I could not find any mention of this in any of the other printed sources.

“Cape Anginsky, up to 300 feet high, is a terrible, sheer rock, rising directly above the foaming lake and strongly cracked in different directions; all its irregularities and ledges are dotted with countless nests of gulls and cormorants, dense swarms of which fill the surrounding area with piercing screams.”

And here is what I.S. Georgi reports about cormorants at Cape Khaman-Kit:

“Here, south of the mouth of the Upper Angara, on the eastern shore (at 55° N) there is a particularly revered rocky cape of the Holy Sea - Cape Shaman. Among its many rocks, three especially rise, like vertical pillars, 200 feet (about 30 fathoms) above the surface of the lake. One of them looks like a colossal human head, with a deep nose and deep, dark depressions like eyes; in the crevice that represents the mouth, whole flocks of sea ravens, or cormorants, nest, of which there are generally many on this shore of Lake Baikal...”

In the summer of 1855, partially repeating the path of I.S. Georgi, another famous naturalist, Gustav Radde, made a trip to Lake Baikal. He left a vivid description of the cormorant colony on the island of Cormorant Stone, or Stolbovsky, near Peschanaya Bay. I.S. Georgi did not see this island, since he began his journey much to the northeast, and his companion, student Lebedev, although he mentions Stolbovsky Island, says nothing about cormorants on it.

“And the steepest slopes of the rocks are animated by birds,” we read in the “Extract” from the report of Gustav Radde (1857), “on them, precisely until the month of August, an incredible number of individuals of some genera are found. During brood season, the Daurian jackdaw searches here for the deepest

deep crevasses and builds its nest on the most inaccessible debris; Large seagulls nest peacefully with her right there. In other places, whole families of carmorans, these ubiquitous fish predators, hatch their chicks. Particularly notable for their abundance is one secluded rocky island in the middle of the lake, lying off the western shore, 30 versts above the village of Goloustnaya.

From afar, G. Radde saw lines of sea raven stretching to the tops of a wild cliff, while other flocks flew towards them; approaching the rock, he found it dotted entirely with flat nests, from which protruded the open beaks of young carmorans, carefully guarded by their parents. Having scattered the black predators with a rifle shot, which flew off in whole clouds about four miles from the island, G. Radde climbed onto the cliff to take a closer look at this huge feathered colony. On the accumulated layer of bird droppings, a foot high, lay the remains of small fish; not a blade of grass, not even a piece of lichen was visible throughout this entire space, and the surface of the rock was so slippery from fresh excrement that walking on it was not only difficult, but even dangerous. The inside of the nests showed him all the gradual phases of carmoran development, from newly hatched and at first still blind chicks, to the age when flight feathers begin to sprout. He even found warm eggs, in which the beating pulse of the embryo was clearly felt; the female, sitting on the eggs, at the same time lays new ones, and this explains the uneven age of the numerous brood. G. Radde counted up to 10 chicks in many nests. The stay of the carmorans on this cliff continues as long as their family life is determined by the need, on the part of the parents, to protect the weak cubs, but as soon as the latter begin to act with wings and beaks, social life begins, so to speak, in which every member endowed with by nature with equal rights and equal means, fully follows the general instinct and common habits; and now these clouds of karmorans leave their native cliff and fly to the coast into the bays, where they greedily wait for the spoils left to them from fishing. In the autumn they cover the Barguzia and Selenga bays in thousands and rise from the lake in whole black clouds to catch their tasty prey.”

The magazine “Library for Reading”, popular in the middle of the last century, published an essay by S.I. Cherepanov “On Siberian Birds” (1859), in which several lines are devoted to a colony of cormorants on the Cormorant Stone, or Stolbovsky Island, already known from G. Radde’s description : “The cormorant chose for its home the rocks surrounding Lake Baikal, so rich in fish. Especially one huge rock near the western shore, emerging from the water, forms a favorite seat

This bird is called “Cormorant Stone” from this. Swimming up to this rock, you will be amazed by the flock of cormorants rising from it in such countless numbers that from a distance they seem like a cloud. Greedily devouring only fish, the cormorant is completely unfit for human food; but it is useful for the observer in that it proves to what extent any breed of bird can multiply if it is not interfered with incubating and raising its chicks.”

Thirty years after G.I. Radde, the then famous doctor and traveler N.V. Kirillov visited Lake Baikal (1886), who in turn testified that “cormorants... are mainly found on the islands of the Small Sea” and that “There are such masses of cormorants here that the droppings lie in a thick layer on the rocks and its unpleasant smell spreads far.”

Until the end of the 19th century, the cormorant in Maloye More remained a landscape bird that could not be ignored. Geologist V.A. Obruchev (1890), who visited Olkhon Island in 1889, wrote that “the island of the Small Sea provides shelter for countless cormorants and gulls, whose droppings cover these rocks in a thick layer, and the coastal cliffs seem bleached with lime.” The same was reported in the Baikal volume of “Earth Studies of Asia” of 1895, compiled mainly based on materials from a five-year study of the coasts of Baikal by geologist I.D. Chersky. Particularly valuable is this researcher’s indication of the nesting of the cormorant on Modote Island. Modote is the smallest island of the Small Sea; its elongated ridge of low stones is now covered here and there only with grassy vegetation. It turns out that in the last century a forest grew on it. Modote - from the Buryat “modon” - forest. During the time of I.D. Chersky, “several tree trunks were preserved on its surface, standing on their roots, although they were already completely dried out.” This island, as well as the island of Yador, according to I.D. Chersky, “are inhabited by countless cormorants and gulls.” The following is said about another island of the Small Sea, Khubyn Island, in “Geography of Asia” (Semyonov et al. 1895): “... as for the white color of a significant part of its cliffs, which, when viewed from a distance, can be considered calcareous, “then this color depends on the droppings of cormorants and gulls, which nest here in abundance, as well as on other islands of the Small Sea.”

The first signal about the reduction in the number of cormorants on Lake Baikal also came from geologist I.D. Chersky. In “Geography of Asia” (1895) this is mentioned twice, and due to the great value of these instructions we will present them in full:

“During the travel of I.D. Chersky in 1878-1879. neither in this cliff (Chayachiy), nor in others on the same path, he did not meet nesting gulls, which were seen here in abundance in the fifties, as

Radde testifies to this. In the same way, in this and in general in the southwestern part of Baikal, Chersky no longer met cormorants, which apparently moved to the northeastern part of the lake.”

Somewhat below, these observations by I.D. Chersky are clarified as follows: “In the entire southwestern part of the lake with Cormorant Stone inclusive, he did not meet a single cormorant, although he examined Cormorant Bay on June 26, therefore at the same time of year and only for four days later than Radde."

Did cormorants nest in the southwestern part of the lake between the source of the Angara and Kultuk? Unfortunately, eyewitness accounts of this apparently have not survived. For almost a hundred years, the entire southwestern part of Baikal largely remained terra incognita, which was due to the fault of P.S. Pallas. In “Earth Science of Asia” in 1879, Karl Ritter noted that P.S. Pallas “spiked Kultuk’s research, useless in his then opinion, both for mineralogy and botany.” It was thanks to this that I.S. Georgi began his journey across Baikal much northeast of this place, and ended at the delta of the Selenga River. G. Radde set out on a campaign from Listvyanka, but fell ill on the way and was forced to stop the expedition, reaching only the Holy Nose Peninsula.

Subsequently, P.S. Pallas realized that he had made a mistake, but, as K. Ritter claims, “the mistake was irreparable.” Because of this recklessness of P.S. Pallas, we now have no eyewitness accounts of cormorants nesting in the extreme southwestern part of the lake. However, there is no doubt that cormorants nested here, as ancient and modern maps of the lake tell.

I.S. Georgi noted that many physical and geographical objects of Baikal received their names from “their appearance or color, partly from the plants, animals, fish found on them or near them...”.

Indeed, on maps of Lake Baikal you can see the names of many animals, especially those that lived in large colonies, were clearly visible, or played some prominent role in the life of the local population.

There are several Gull Islands on maps of the lake. Chayachy Cliff and Chayacha Valley, Krokhalinaya Lip and Krokhaliny Cape, Elk Lake, Otter River, Snake Lip, several Bear Pads, rivers and bays, Kabanya River and Kabany Cape, Yazovka River, Ushkany Islands, Pad and Cape and others. Many original Buryat and Evenki toponyms, translated into Russian, also turn into names of animals. For example, capes Nizhnie, Srednie and Verkhnie Khomuty (Evenk “khomoti” - bear), the Buguldeika River (“bugudi” in translation)

water from Evenki - deer), channel and tract Galatui (Buryat galun - goose) and many others.

But of all the animal species, the most widespread in the toponymy of Lake Baikal is undoubtedly the cormorant. Many physical and geographical objects are named after him or were called in the recent past: lakes, islands, capes, cliffs, bays, springs, rivers. You can count about 30 natural objects named after this bird. On modern maps of Lake Baikal, four islands are called Cormorants. The only island on Lake Kotokel near Baikal is also called by this name. In addition, the island opposite Cape Baklany, or Kamenny, on the eastern coast of Lake Baikal is labeled Baklany on I.D. Chersky’s diagrams. In the time of I.S. Georgi, ten islands in the Small Sea were designated by the name of this bird. Four capes, three bays, a river, a spring, a sor lake and a junction of the former Circum-Baikal road are called cormorants. Not far from Cape Tolstoy at the source of the Angara there is Cormorant Cliffs.

Not all cormorant nesting places - Anginsky Cape, Khaman-Kit Cape, Arul Cape and others - were named after him. The Cormorant Islands of the Small Sea were renamed over time, since it was not easy to navigate so many islands with the same names. However, we can safely say that in almost all cases the toponym “cormorant” indicates that cormorants nested here. Only the sor lake to the north of Posolsk raises doubts - it is possible that it attracted birds only during the migration seasons or autumn aggregations in shallow waters rich in food.

During the Circum-Baikal trip, I examined almost all the places called Cormorants. From the source of the Angara to Kultuk, cormorants nested between Cape Stolby and Kolokolny and between Cape Tolstoy and the source of the Angara. The legends of the inhabitants of Kultuk and the names on maps of the lake tell about the nesting of these birds here.

I.D. Chersky did not find a nesting place for cormorants on the island opposite Cape Kamenny to the north of Selenga, G.I. Radde did not get to this place, I.S. Georgi says nothing about it. But in Drizhenkov’s “Location of Lake Baikal”, published in 1908, it is reported that the “truncated pyramid” of this island is “covered with guano.” Having examined this island, I came to the conclusion that cormorants could nest on it, flying to the Selenga River delta for food or finding it in numerous coves in the Ostrovki area.

There is no doubt that these birds nested on Lake Kotokel, which is still considered very fishy.

The study of toponymy made it possible to somewhat clarify the picture of the former distribution of the cormorant and see that in the recent past it found favorable conditions for life around the entire Baikal.

By the beginning of the twentieth century, as shown above, the cormorant had completely disappeared from southern Baikal, but was still extremely numerous in the Maloye More and Chivyrkuisky Bay. Whether he continued to inhabit the rocks at Cape Haman Kit at this time remains unclear.

Schematic map of the former distribution of the great cormorant on Lake Baikal.

In the second half of the 19th century, as was shown at the beginning of this report, the cormorant disappeared from the entire southwestern part of Lake Baikal, but it still lived in large numbers north of the latitude of the Olkhon Gate and Barguzin Bay - in Maloye More and Chivyrkui.

What materials give grounds to talk about this? In 1933, the ornithological fauna of Olkhon Island was studied by A.V. Tretyakov (1934), an employee of Irkutsk University, who published a list of 74 bird species and valuable information about cormorants in the Small Sea.

“There are quite a lot of cormorants along the coast of the island,” this naturalist reported, “one might say, in the thousands. There are more of them on the West Coast; here among the rocks there are colonies of nests of 140-

160. Near the Khalgai ulus, on a rocky, steep bank there is a colony of cormorants, in which I counted 137 nests on one cliff. According to residents, they have been nesting here for several decades, despite the fact that their chicks are beaten with stones.”

A.V. Tretyakov did not set himself the task of determining the number of this bird in the Small Sea, or identifying and mapping all the places of its nesting colonies. For modern ornithologists, this data would be of exceptional value! Unfortunately, this often becomes clear when nothing can be replenished or changed.

After A.V. Tretyakov, the cormorant in Maloye More did not attract the attention of any ornithologists, but the available evidence of the massive collection of its eggs and the procurement of chick carcasses during the Great Patriotic War and after it suggests that nesting colonies of these birds existed here until 1950s.

Game warden V.D. Pastukhov saw the last two cormorant nests with clutches at Cape Kobylya Golova in 1962. Since then, no reliable data on cormorant nesting in the Maloye More region has been reported.

Around the same time, the decline and disappearance of cormorant populations in Chivyrkuisky Bay ended.

The last naturalist to see many of these birds here was zoologist S.S. Turov (1923). He was lucky enough to observe “huge schools” of cormorants flying over Lake Arangatui from Barguzinsky to Chivyrkuisky Bay. There are no materials about the nesting places and numbers of cormorants in his published works.

At the end of June 1957, we discovered a colony of cormorants in the Chi-Vyrkuysky Bay. At that time, they nested exclusively on the Nameless Pebble, or on the Eastern Cormorant Stone. On the flat top of the island, in the recesses of the rocks and on the cornices, I found 9 undestroyed cormorant nests. Only 4 of them had masonry. In the entire Chivyrkuisky Bay we managed to count 12-14 cormorants.

The final disappearance of these feathered Mohicans was a matter of several years.

In the summer of 1959, game management student A. Cherepanov visited Kameshk Bezymyanny, but no longer found these birds there. He reported this at the First Ornithological Conference of Siberia. The last colony of great cormorants on Lake Baikal and the northernmost in the Soviet Union has disappeared.

True, after a few years there was hope that the cormorant had not yet completely left its northern homeland. In 1967, game warden V. Karpov found a cormorant nest with one egg on Kameshk Bezymyanny. But this barely glimmering hope died out almost instantly: two years later, zoologists N.G. Skryabin and N.I. Litvinov examined the

almost all the islands of Lake Baikal and not only did not find a single inhabited nest, but also did not meet a single cormorant.

On August 26, 1971, I found a single individual of this species on Kameshk Bezymyanny. In 1970-1973, I walked and rode a boat along the entire two thousand kilometer coast of the lake, then drove around it many times with N.G. Scriabin on the boat “Naturalist”, visited all the islands and all the former cormorant colonies, but did not meet them anywhere not a single cormorant.

The cormorant I saw in 1971 in Chivyrkuisky Bay turned out to be the last cormorant of Lake Baikal. If in the future someone manages to find these birds here, they will no longer be local, Baikal birds, but alien, vagrant individuals.

The ecology of the Baikal cormorants has remained almost unstudied, however, by collecting bit by bit fragmentary observations of naturalists, as well as using our data on the last colony of cormorants in the Chi-Vyrkuysky Bay (Gusev 1960), it is possible to recreate a picture of the life of these birds, at least in the most general terms .

In 1955, the arrival of the first cormorant in Chivyrkuisky Bay was recorded by us on May 3. At this time, most of the bay was covered with ice, and only in a small area of ​​​​the water area near Cheremsha and Istok did open water appear. The mass arrival of cormorants to Lake Baikal began later, after the ice on the lake “heated up”. Soon after their arrival, the birds began building new nests and repairing old ones. Nests were made in trees, indigenous, rocky islands, as well as on the cliffs of the mainland coast. On Kameshk Bezymyanny they were located on the cornices and in the recesses of the rocks on both sides of the island - western and eastern. The nests once occupied the flat top of the island, but over time they were buried under a layer of guano.

The nests of cormorants, unlike gulls, are spacious and massive. They were built from branches of larch, cedar, rose hips and other trees and shrubs. The length of individual branches in the nest reaches half a meter, and the thickness is 25 mm. It was not easy to bring such a heavy load from the Gulf coast. On some cedar branches we found fresh, not yet dried needles, which indicates that the birds systematically repaired the old nests that they had used for many decades. The nest gradually grew and eventually became like a tall pedestal. The height of the nest is up to 60 cm, the diameter in the upper part is 2 m 10 cm, the diameter of the tray is 32 cm, its depth is 9 cm. It is lined with reed stems and contour feathers of seagulls. The cormorants did not care at all about the cleanliness of the nest. Chicks and

adult individuals thickly splashed the nest with white feces and it was tightly held together like plaster.

Having built a new nest or renovated an old one, the birds began laying eggs. On Kameshk Bezymyanny on June 21, 1957, we found a total of 14 cormorant eggs: in two nests there were 4 eggs, in one - 1 and in one - 5 eggs. On June 22 (July 5, new style), G. Radde saw on Cormorant Stone both heavily hatched eggs, newly hatched chicks, and young ones whose flight feathers had already begun to sprout. Mass hatching of cormorant chicks was apparently observed in early July. G. Radde wrote that in many nests there were up to 10 chicks. According to A.V. Tretyakov, the average brood size is 3 chicks.

The eggs in the clutches of cormorants are painted a delicate bluish color and covered with white and brown limescale, making their surface seem slightly rough. The dimensions of the 9 eggs we described from two nests were as follows, mm: 60.00x40.25, 60.25x40.85; 61.75x40.50, 61.15x39.50, 62.70x39.75, 64.40x39.45, 63.10x39.25, 63.75x39.15, 59.65x38.45.

A.V. Tretyakov made a colorful description of the life of a cormorant colony. “Starting from 5-6 o’clock in the morning,” says this researcher, “adult cormorants fly to the Maloe More and after 20-30 minutes return to the chicks with fish in the esophagus, and so they fly all day long. There is a lull for two or three chachas after 12 o'clock, then they fish again until 8-9 o'clock in the evening.

The chicks, noticing their parents flying up, shout loudly and hoarsely, “kuvik, kuvyk, kuvi.” Cormorants feed their chicks with fry and bulls of different sizes, depending on the age of the chicks. By the way, the length

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The digestive system of the eldest chick turned out to be 2 meters 38 centimeters, while the length of the entire bird was 67 centimeters.

The fish in an adult cormorant is not in the beak, but in the upper part of the esophagus. An adult bird, when feeding chicks, bends its neck and pushes the fish into the chick's beak, and the chick's head is pushed almost halfway into the adult cormorant's mouth.

It’s not difficult to find a cormorant colony; 300-500 meters away from it, adult cormorants are resting on the coastal rocks, and 50 meters away you can already hear the specific smell of a cormorant colony; it resembles the smell of rotten, decaying fish.

Having noticed the hunter, adult cormorants with a hoarse, sharp cry of “grv-grv-grv” fly away to the Maloe More. From a distance, the massive cry of cormorants resting in the colony resembles the squabbling of dogs. About thirty minutes later the cormorants return, but, noticing the visitor, not reaching the nest about 20 meters, they turn sharply back into the sea, screaming. None of the cormorants protect their chicks; they are quite cowardly and do not fly closer than 20 meters to the hunter.”

After the chicks fledged, the entire colony

in the words of G. Radde, she left her native cliff and flew to the coast, into the bays. Birds accumulated near the Upper Angara River, around the Selenga delta, as well as in the Barguzin Bay and at the mouth of the Barguzin River, as evidenced by I.S. Georgi: “The abundance of fish in the river - sturgeon, pike, burbot, lenkov, whitefish, etc., especially the omul, which attracts countless flocks of birds at the end of summer. The mouth of the river, at least half a mile deep into the bay, was so dotted with cormorants and gulls that almost the entire surface of the water was covered with them.”

N.V. talks about the accumulation of cormorants at the mouth of the Upper Angara. Kirillov: “That large migrations are possible for the omul is suggested by the fact that they see a cormorant chasing a fleece in the fall from afar... This bird is very voracious; they say about it that it eats the seventh fish, that is, it swallows one fish after another, and when it comes to the turn of the seventh fish, the first one is already thrown out, often almost undigested.

Of course, such stories are exaggerated, notes N.V. Kirillov, but there is no doubt that a cormorant can dive deeply, remain under water for 10 minutes, if not more, and at this time not only swallow fish, but even without using it, hit it with its curved hook of the upper jaw of the beak, as if to prepare food for the future.

So this cormorant attacks the walking fleece in dense masses, and there have been cases when it forced the fish to retreat and turn back. But it is hardly true that the cormorant drives fish to Angarsk from Olkhon: more likely, it remembers that at certain times the fish group there and fly there to hunt.”

Now we know that the cormorant did not chase the fish “from afar”, but followed its schools after the omul left its feeding grounds in the Small Sea and moved along the coast to the Upper Angara - one of the main spawning rivers of Baikal. Talking about the cormorant as a voracious consumer of fish, N.V. Kirillov rightly notes that it is wrong to blame the cormorant for the depletion of Baikal’s fish stocks, plundered by nets, seines and drives.

In mid-September, Maloye More cormorants gathered in autumn flocks and by the end of the month the last birds left the Maloye More. By October there were only a few of them left.

How many cormorants lived on Baikal during that golden time for them, when their nesting colonies were located around the entire lake, and populations were in full bloom? Alas! This will forever remain a secret.

Judging by some data from A.V. Tretyakov, as well as the results of our searches for former colonies based on the remains of nests, it can be assumed that in the 1930s in the Maloye More these birds nested in at least 10 places. We found fresh remains of nests on Olkhon Island near

capes Sagan, Krasny and Khuzhirtuysky, on Cape Arul, on the islands of Khubyn and Bargodagon. A lot of birds nested on Bolshoy Toynik Island, where we found the remains of nests in six places.

If we take the average size of a brood as 5 chicks, a colony as 150 nests, and assume that the nesting places of cormorants were located in 10 places, then we can say that in the 1930s, the autumn population of Little Sea cormorants, according to the most conservative estimates, reached 10,000 individuals.

“I consider it advisable to organize the procurement of cormorant meat,” wrote A.V. Tretyakov. “It’s quite edible, and even excellent for canning.” There are a lot of cormorants, each of them weighs on average 3 kg, it is not difficult to prepare them, and the products from them will be quite cheap and profitable. By widely deploying such preparations, we will be able to provide cities with hundreds of additional tons of cheap, fatty poultry meat.”

Very strong arguments were needed to dare to make such a call.

The tragedy of the cormorants on Lake Baikal, the first events of which took place in the second half of the 19th century, ended before our eyes - in the recent 1960s. Thousands and thousands of these well-flying, fast-swimming and superbly diving birds from the now thriving, and in some places prosperous order of copepods have sunk into oblivion. What caused their disappearance?

Not having absolute evidence to answer this question and not having the opportunity to have it, knowing nothing about the adverse effects that birds were exposed to in wintering areas and on flight routes, we are forced to limit ourselves to only more or less plausible assumptions.

What caused the “relocation” of cormorants from the southwestern part of the lake in the second half of the 19th century? At that time, it was believed, as S.I. Cherepanov wrote, that “the cormorant is completely unfit for human food,” therefore, its direct extermination was out of the question. Most of the colonies of southern Baikal were located on almost inaccessible cliffs, so fishing for cormorant eggs should be excluded. We risk not understanding this at all if we do not follow the change in the natural situation on Lake Baikal by the end of the 19th century.

Already by 1772, by the time of P.S. Pallas and I.S. Georgi’s trip to Lake Baikal, a process of reduction in the number of some animal species had clearly emerged. And although I.S. Georgi noted that on the shores of the lake it is easier to meet a bear and an escaped Nerchinsk convict than a Russian villager, he gives examples of a noticeable impoverishment of nature. In the southwestern part of Baikal, Baikal has become very rare

the seal, the “black” sable has been “completely exterminated” in the sources of the Upper Angara, and the river beaver has completely disappeared from the rivers flowing into Baikal. Sable by this time, apparently, had also been knocked out on Olkhon Island and on the Svyatoy Nos Peninsula.

In 1855, G. Radde witnessed the continuing impoverishment of nature. He wrote: “...especially the extraordinary decline in red game over the last four years throughout the southwestern area; so, while back in 1852 at least 50 musk deer were caught annually in the vicinity of Kultuk, recently their capture was limited, and then rarely, to one animal.”

By the time I.D. Chersky worked on Baikal, the natural situation in the southern part of the lake had changed even more noticeably. In 1879, in Kul-Tuk there were already 65 households with 433 inhabitants, in the village of Listvennichnoye, which was a winter quarter and postal station during the time of I.S. Georgi, there were now 90 households with 400 residents, and a settlement with 33 households also grew at the mouth of the Goloustnaya River and 172 inhabitants. All these settlements are located not far from the former nesting places of cormorants. Population growth has led to a catastrophic reduction in fish resources. After all, G. Radde and N.V. Kirillov already had the task of finding out the reasons for the decline of the fishing industry. Apparently, it was the lack of the former abundance of fish, as well as the degradation of the fishing industry, that led to the disappearance of cormorants throughout southern Baikal by the end of the 19th century.

The reasons for the death of cormorants in the Maloye More and Chivyrkuisky Bay are more complex and varied.

By the end of the 1950s, Baikal experienced the largest social changes in its entire history. In just ten years, he stepped from a thousand-year-old “patriarchal” past into the modern age of technical civilization. Back in the late fifties, rowing boats were used almost exclusively on Lake Baikal. In the sixties, many speedboats and high-speed motor boats appeared. At a time when local residents were armed only with shavings, setovukhas and access roads, bird colonies remote from the shore were in relative safety. Few people thought of rowing to the islands several, and sometimes several tens of kilometers away. After the appearance of many “cauldrons”, “obeys” and “progresses”, a mortal threat loomed over the bird colonies. Getting to the islands or distant coastal colonies was no longer difficult. Bird colonies began to be visited almost daily. Cormorants were “stoned”, shot for fun with small-caliber rifles, and the carcasses of their chicks were prepared for fur farms. Professor M.M. Kozhov (1972) argued that “great damage to cormorant nests was caused by unlimited

important collection of eggs, especially during the Patriotic War and for several years after it.”

There are no cormorants on Baikal for a long time, but the collection of eggs, this time gulls, continues on the islands of the Small Sea and Chivyrkuisky Bay. A sad monument to this wild relic stands white on the top of the island of Bargodagoi. There is an inscription on it: “I received death while collecting gull eggs on this rock.”

An important role in the disappearance of cormorants was played by the factor of disturbance, which triggered unfavorable cenotic relations for the cormorants with the herring gulls Larus argentatus, nesting next to them. When disturbed, the gulls returned to their nests much faster and, pecking at the eggs of cormorants, could cause enormous damage to their clutches.

Although we can only guess about the decisive factors in the disappearance of a particular colony, the general cause of the death of cormorants is beyond doubt. The great cormorant on Lake Baikal has become another victim of the strategy of spontaneous attack on nature. It disappeared after the gray goose Anser anser, the taiga bean goose Anser fabalis, the dry goose Cygnopsis cygnoides and the bustard Otis tarda, becoming the fifth species of birds in the “black book” of Baikal. These five species have become extinct over the past fifty years.

Concluding the story about the fate of the Baikal great cormorants, it is necessary to pay attention to the following circumstance: some rare and even very rare species of animals in the Baikal region continue to exist, while one of the most widespread bird species disappeared with amazing speed.

While paying due attention to rare and endangered animal species, we must not forget that the most vulnerable bird species are those

1 - The range of the great cormorant in the Baikal region and Transbaikalia according to modern ornithological reports. 2 - The only place within this range where cormorants still actually nest is the Torey Lakes.

the number of which reaches a high concentration in nesting areas. The history of the relationship between man and nature teaches us: colonial breeding bird species are among the first to disappear from the face of the Earth.

The examples are well known and need not be named. One of the most recent and saddest is the great cormorant on Lake Baikal.

Literature a

Gusev O.K. 1960. About the nesting of birds on the islands of the Chivyrkuisky Bay of Baikal and Lake.

Rangotuya // Tr. East Sib. Phil. AN SSSR 23: 69-88. Kirillov N.V. 1886. Trip to Nizhnaangarsk, Barguzin district on Lake Baikal in 1885

year // Izv. East Sib. dept. Rus. geogr. community 13, 1/2. Kozhov M.M. 1972. Essays on Baikal studies. Irkutsk

Obruchev V.A. 1890. Oro-geological observations on the Olkhon and Western islands

Baikal region // Mining journal. 12. Radde G. 1857. Lake Baikal // Vestn. Rus. geogr. society 31. Ritter K. 1879. Geography of Asia.

Semenov P.P., Chersky I.D., Petz G.G., background. 1895. Geography of Asia. St. Petersburg, 2. Tretyakov A.V. 1934. To the avifauna of Olkhon Island according to observations of the 1933 expedition

years // Tr. East Sib. Univ. 2: 118-133. Turov S.S. 1923. Materials on the bird fauna of the Barguzin region // Collection of articles. works of professors and teachers of Irkutsk University 4: 132-167.

Russian Journal of Ornithology 2016, Volume 25, Express Issue 1274: 1387-1389

Southernmost nesting site of the mothfish Xenus cinereus

A.N. Tsvelykh

Second edition. First published in 1982*

Morodunka Xenus cinereus is a widespread species in the forest, forest-tundra and partially tundra and forest-steppe zones of our country. Outside the USSR, it was found breeding only in Finland. On migration, this sandpiper is found in Europe, Africa, Asia and even in the northern regions of Australia. Sometimes wandering non-breeding individuals can be seen along the banks of large rivers or on sea coasts in the summer.

Morodunka is a small, starling-sized, grayish-brownish-colored sandpiper with a light belly. A characteristic feature that distinguishes it from other waders of the same size is a slightly upward-curved beak and not very long, rather bright yellow legs.

* Tsvelykh A.N. 1982. The southernmost nesting of the Morodunka // Hunting and hunting. household 12: 9. Rus. ornithol. magazine 2016. Volume 25. Express issue No. 000

Everyone knows that Baikal birds fly to warmer regions in the fall and return in the spring, but not everyone is familiar with the exact routes of the feathered migrants. The other day, one of the Buryat travelers told Number One that he saw Baikal cormorants fishing on the exotic Vietnamese island of Phu Quoc. How our birds relax at luxurious southern resorts will be discussed in this material.

All familiar faces

Ulan-Ude tourist Vladimir recently returned from Fukuoka and told how he unexpectedly met “countrymen”.

“Early in the morning I went swimming and saw several black birds in the sea, they circled, and then sat on a fishing net and began to pull fish out of it,” the tourist recalls. – I swam closer and was surprised: these are our cormorants!

According to Vladimir, there can be no mistake here: he is a fisherman himself and knows well both the appearance of the birds and their habits. And they were the same as on Baikal. Cormorants, instead of looking for fish themselves and catching them at depth, diving from the air into the water, got used to carrying already caught fish from Vietnamese nets. There is less energy consumption, and the fish in the nets is fattier and tastier.

Migratory birds are flying

Buryat scientists confirmed that the cormorants seen by the tourist could well have had “Buryat registration.”

“The wintering grounds of the great cormorant, which nests on Lake Baikal, are located in Southeast Asia, including Vietnam,” says Alexander Ananin, Doctor of Biological Sciences, Deputy Director for Science of the Federal State Budgetary Institution “Reserved Podlemorye”. – It is known that flocks of great cormorants fly from Lake Baikal in the fall along the Selenga to Mongolia and then they separate. One part of the birds turns east, to the Amur River, and flies towards China, descending to the Sea of ​​Japan.

Other cormorants head due south, through the lakes of Inner Mongolia and the areas of China bordering the Tibetan plateau. According to Alexander Ananin, the final stop for migratory birds is the delta of large rivers in Southeast Asia, primarily the Mekong. Phu Quoc Island is also located in this area, where the great cormorant appears to spend the winter.

Deadly transit

Apparently, the natural intelligence of the great cormorant living on Lake Baikal helped it survive in the turbulent 90s, when the population of this bird was practically destroyed by Chinese poachers. The fact is that one of the versions of the almost complete disappearance of the great cormorant on Lake Baikal a quarter of a century ago is that, from a safety point of view, the route through China, where this bird flew for the winter, was incorrect. Scientists admit: the sharp decline in many species of Baikal birds and their inclusion in the Red Book is the result of the unprecedented destruction of birds by the Chinese.

Thus, several years ago, at one of the international conferences of ornithologists, in which Russian biologists from the Barguzin State Natural Biosphere Reserve participated, the fate of the endangered Dubrovnik bird, a songbird of the bunting family, was discussed.

Shocking figures were announced there: in Russia, from 1980 to 2013, the number of the species decreased by 95 percent. These birds are caught and eaten in China, where they fly for the winter. Chinese gluttons consider them a delicacy, paying about $11 apiece.

Until 1980, this species numbered hundreds of millions of individuals; today it is on the verge of extinction. The problem is that Dubrovniks gather in huge flocks and during migration become easy prey for poachers. Only in 1997, due to protests from environmentalists, the official fishing of the migratory Dubrovnik was banned, but today it continues illegally.

Safe zone

So, returning to our cormorants. In the 80s of the last century, this bird, which previously actively used the territory of China for wintering transit and was practically destroyed by Chinese poachers, apparently changed its routes and today flies to a more civilized and calm Vietnam. Choosing a wintering place, including the fairly large Vietnamese island of Phu Quoc, most of which is declared a nature reserve.

Moreover, fish and shellfish fishing is actively carried out on the island, which creates simply unlimited opportunities for Baikal birds to feed on other people’s catches. At the same time, the island is being built up with luxury hotels for foreign tourists.

Accordingly, shooting of birds by Vietnamese fishermen near tourist beaches is completely excluded. If this version is correct, it becomes clear why the death of cormorants in such heavenly wintering grounds stopped and they began to quickly restore their numbers. And if in the 80s of the last century the cormorant was practically not registered on the “sacred sea”, then, according to scientist Alexander Ananin, “by the fall of 2017 its number on Lake Baikal exceeded ten thousand individuals, and this species has long ceased to require any -or security."

Moreover, this bird, growing in number, is classified as a game bird. On Lake Baikal, local fishermen consider giant schools of cormorants to be one of the culprits for the sharp decline in catches of omul and other fish and regularly complain about this.

The fact is that cormorants have learned to deftly empty fishing nets. But few people decide to shoot cormorants in Buryatia. Firstly, cartridges are now expensive, and the financial condition of fishermen has deteriorated significantly over several years. Secondly, the meat of this bird is considered to have an unpleasant taste. It's tough, dark, and smells fishy. Hunters say that cormorant can be eaten only after long soaking and heat treatment, but it is impossible to completely remove the unpleasant fishy smell.

As a matter of fact, the parodic, cunning, but successful image of the cormorant today looks much more modern than the proud eagles depicted on many coats of arms, long exterminated by poachers.

Dmitry Rodionov, “Number One”.

Phalacrocorax carbo(L., 1758)

Order Copepods - Pelecanciformes Family Cormorants - Phalacrocoraidae

Short description. A large waterfowl about the size of a goose, with almost entirely black plumage. The beak is long, with a hook at the end. The bottom of the “face” is yellowish-white. Young birds are dark brown with a light (sometimes almost white) belly. In flight, it differs well from ducks and geese, as well as loons, by its rather long, rounded tail and the absence of light spots on the wings. In swimming birds the tail is not visible. Voice - low, “grunting” sounds, although in general it is very silent.

Habitats and biology. Inhabits the shores of fish-rich water bodies. It is very flexible in choosing nesting sites - it nests with equal success on trees, rocks and on the ground. On Baikal it settles on rocky islands and cliffs, often in hard-to-reach places. The nest is built from dry branches and twigs, the tray is carelessly lined with large (flight) feathers of gulls and cormorants, as well as pieces of polyethylene, paper and other soft debris. On the rocks, the nesting structure has been used for many years; every year the birds correct and build it up, so the duration of nesting can be judged by the massiveness of the nest. The phenology of migrations on Lake Baikal has not been traced. Apparently, it arrives in late April - early May with the appearance of open water. The nesting period is extended, probably due to the large number of repeated clutches. There are 3-5, sometimes more (up to 9) eggs in a clutch. Chicks in most clutches hatch from mid to late June, in late and repeated clutches - until early August. They stay in the nest for 50-60 days. Nesting success is unclear. They feed on fish. On the Small Sea, the diet depends on the nesting site - in the southern part of the strait, the main diet is made up of trash fish species (perch, roach, dace). Birds nesting on the island. Yedor (middle part of the strait), feed mainly on gobies.

Spreading. Widely distributed on all continents, excluding Antarctica and South America, although it does not form a continuous range anywhere. It lives on the shores of both seas and inland, mainly stagnant bodies of water. On the territory of the Irkutsk region it nests on the coast of the Small Sea on Lake Baikal; flights are known to water bodies in other regions of the region, in particular to the Bratsk Reservoir.

Number. At one time, the cormorant was one of the background species of the Baikal coast, as evidenced by the names of the islands and capes, as well as historical literary sources. However, already at the end of the 19th century, its numbers began to decline and in the early 70s. last century, this species stopped nesting on Lake Baikal. For more than 40 years, only rare vagrants were recorded on Baikal. However, in 2006, in the Maloye More Strait on the island. Shargadagon two nests with chicks were discovered. Further research showed a rapid increase in the number of cormorants nesting on Baikal, and in 2009 their number on the Small Sea was at least 500 breeding pairs. In this regard, we can expect the appearance of cormorant settlements in other parts of the western coast of Baikal, in particular on the island. Cormorant Stone in the bay area. Sandy.

Limiting factors. The true reasons for the disappearance of the cormorant from Lake Baikal are unknown. OK. Gusev associates it at the end of the 19th - beginning of the 20th centuries in Southern Baikal with a decrease in the number of fish. T.N. Gagina explains this fact by direct extermination (collecting eggs and preparing chick carcasses for fur farms) and the factor of disturbance in nesting areas. Later researchers believe that the disappearance is due to the unfavorable ecological situation in the wintering areas. The reasons for the return of the cormorant to Lake Baikal are more obvious and are associated with the deteriorating environmental situation (many years of drought) in Northeast China and Mongolia.

Security measures taken and required. Inhabits the territory of the Pribaikalsky National Park. No special security measures are required. Monitoring of the status of this species on Lake Baikal is necessary.

Information sources: 1 - Gagina, 1961; 2 - Gusev, 1960; 3 - Gusev, 1980; 4 - Melnikov, Durnev, 2009; 5 - Podkovyrov et al., 2000; 6 - Pyzhyanov, 2006; 7 - Pyzhyanov et al. 2008; 8 - Pyzhyanov, Pyzhyanova, in press; 9 - Pyzhyanov et al., 1997; 10 - Rade, 1861; 11 - Ryabitsev, 2008; 12 - Ryabtsev, 2006; 13 - Stepanyan, 2003; 14 - Tolchin, 1971; 15 - Radde, 1863; 16 - data of the compiler.

Compiled by: S.V. Pyzhyanov.

Artist: D.V. Gumpylova.

In addition to the fifth column in Moscow, the Yakut shaman, the Swedish schoolgirl Greta Thunberg, the Englishwoman spoiling us and, more broadly, the Anglo-Saxons, another enemy of Russia has been found: these are cormorants. Not in the slang sense, meaning idiots - that’s a familiar and familiar problem, but in the most direct sense: now about birds.

And the sparrows were then transported to China by wagons, incl. from the USSR.

Perhaps the example of Mao is not indicative, since the Buryat leadership undoubtedly employs outstanding personnel. They have already stopped the campaign of the Yakut shaman. But even such powerful politicians are unlikely to be able to effectively intervene in natural processes and regulate the number of cormorants. Let me remind you ( see “New”, no. for 2014, andfor 2015) that five years ago the top link of the food chain on Lake Baikal (the authorities of Buryatia) already blamed competitors (cormorants) for the decrease in the number of the delicacy - the Baikal omul. Excluded the great cormorant from the Red Book of Buryatia and authorized their shooting. And what? Both the hunt for them was opened and closed (cormorants are still included in the list of hunting and commercial species). Despite the wise instructions of the authorities, no one ran away to exterminate the bird, which had never served as an object of hunting.

Then they pressed on the gluttony of cormorants: “ There are about three thousand individuals in the Chivyrkuisky Bay alone. On average, one bird eats 200-300 grams of fish per day, which is one and a half thousand tons of fish per year in the republic. There is a known case when an omul measuring 24 centimeters was found in the stomach of a killed cormorant.».

Horror! I quoted this from the Ministry of Agriculture website. Now the forest protection has been aroused on the birds, a new reason has been found.

Add to this, for example, parallel attempts to begin the industrial slaughter of Baikal seals. And in the background is the high that caused in Russia the speech of the Swedish schoolgirl Greta at the UN. Russia really lives in a special world, it has a special path, and there are enemies all around. Some kind of cave-fantastic misunderstanding of man’s place in nature, inappropriate vanity and conceit (all these speeches about how the taiga (!) should be turned into a garden, and that omul and “centuries-old pines” should be helped to escape from cormorants), well and, of course, ordinary fraud - all these public and state campaigns, for example, on the senseless and ineffective extinguishing of natural fires in northern Asia, which make it possible to write off billions of budgetary funds.

The island where the pines died has long been called Naked precisely because cormorants settled there, and therefore it was truly naked and treeless.

Now the natural landscape is returning - the fact is that cormorants left Baikal for half a century. This is discussed in many works of modern ornithologists (and their current active comments on social networks), about the same thing there is, for example, a wonderful article by the defender of Lake Baikal Oleg Gusev (1930-2012) in the magazine “Hunting and Hunting Management”, No. 3-4 for 1980 This is a separate topic - why the cormorants left Baikal: the famine of the middle of the last century, which forced people to collect their eggs, the appearance of motorized ships, the industrial development of Baikal and the Baikal region, the overfishing of omul and thus the reduction of the food supply, the massive procurement of birds wintering there in China, etc. .d. There are many versions, as well as about why the cormorant returned - whether the situation in China changed and it multiplied, or whether it migrated from the dry lakes of Mongolia; The fact is that the cormorants of the authorities, even in Buryatia, or even the Federal Center, do not listen and pay little attention to them: there are no fewer motorized vessels on Lake Baikal now than in the 50s of the last century, and no more omul.

Nature lives its own life, and it would be nice for a person to focus on himself and what he is able to change. Fighting the extremely caustic droppings of cormorants is a worthy task, but hardly doomed to success. The cormorant is a natural element of the Baikal ecosystem.

How the Siberian taiga survived for 12 thousand years without such Buryat experts, without military aviation taking on the task of extinguishing it, is absolutely not clear.

According to Korolenko, formidable robbers were called cormorants. Later they began to call it simply hooliganism. Then it’s completely stupid. Russia is just as diligently lowering the standards of mental activity that apply to specialists, and to people in general.

Who's next in line to be your enemy? Who should get ready?

Leave the birds alone, sort yourself out, for example, with the report of the Accounts Chamber, which checked spending from the federal treasury on the Federal Target Program “Protection of Lake Baikal”.

The volume of funding for the Federal Target Program for 2012-2020, according to its original version, is 58 billion rubles; During the period under review, three applied scientific research and experimental developments were completed. “Development of technologies for space monitoring of natural and ecological processes of Lake Baikal” was completed for 95 million rubles, adopted in 2017. There are no documents on the transfer of work to authorities, as well as confirmation of implementation. Adopted in 2017, “Assessment and forecast of transboundary movement of harmful (pollutant) substances in the Selenga River – Lake Baikal system” was completed for 18 million.

There is no information on the application of the results to the Ministry of Natural Resources. Adopted in 2016, “Scientific justification for the environmental acceptability of placing economic and other types of activities in the central ecological zone of the Baikal natural territory” was completed for 12 million rubles. There are no letters confirming the sending of recommendations and results of this work to the authorities to the Ministry of Natural Resources.

Other budget expenses. Ministry of Construction: of the seven facilities planned for commissioning in 2014 (treatment plants and solid waste landfills), not a single one was put into operation on time. Roshydromet: 160 million have been spent, but there is no planned increase in the coverage of Baikal by state environmental monitoring.

Yes, there is trouble with these cormorants.