Caring for Cape Town's cormorants

Hundreds of baby cormorants have been rescued by a bird sanctuary in Cape Town, South Africa. The birds had been abandoned by their parents.

Around 2,000 cormorants were transported to the South African mainland after they were spotted on rocks near Robben Island.

The sanctuary is making every effort to keep the birds alive, but over 800 couldn't be saved. However, the remaining birds are recovering and consume over a tonne of sardines each week.

The youngest of the cormorants are unable to eat without help. They are fed by hand by the 50 or so volunteers who come to help.

This enclosure is for the older cormorants, who are beginning to stretch their wings and swim. When their waterproof feathers have grown, they will be set free. Nicky Stander is a response manager at the sanctuary.

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."

Scientists believe that a lack of food may have caused the cormorant parents to abandon their chicks. Nicky Stander is concerned about what this means for the future of cormorants.

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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