Caring for Cape Town's cormorants

These are baby cormorant birds. They are in a bird centre in South Africa. Bird centres help birds.

These cormorant birds need help. Baby cormorants can't find food on their own. They need their parents. But their parents left them.

People found around 2,000 cormorants without parents. They took the birds to the bird centre. They gave food to the birds.

Now, the cormorants are becoming healthy. They are eating a lot of fish.

Very young cormorants can't eat on their own. People have to give food to the birds by hand.

These cormorants are getting big. They can eat on their own. They can swim. They need space. Soon, they will leave the sanctuary.

Nicky Stander works for the centre.

Nicky Stander: "We will probably start looking at releasing the bigger birds in the next three weeks hopefully and the smaller birds will obviously be here in the next two to three months."

This problem could happen again. Cormorant parents could leave their babies. Nicky Stander is worried. All cormorants could die.

Nicky Stander: "What we're scared of is this is going to happen more and more in the future. If, if they're not having, if they're not finding their fish in the wild, what's going to happen? They're going to either stop breeding or if they do breed, they're going to just abandon if they're not finding enough food. And what's the knock-on effect of that is that the population continues to decline until they become extinct."

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