Cormorants are large seabirds well adapted to swimming and diving. You'll often see them floating, almost submerged on the sea, a river or a lake or standing on rocks with wings outstretched drying.

Broigheall is the Irish name and Phalacrocorax carbo is the latin name for these birds which are found extensively throughout Ireland.

Easy to confuse with shags, usually cormorants will have a white patch, as seen in the image above, around the thigh and also cormorants are more likely to be found inland even at lake and river sites.

Shags have a steeper forehead rising from the bill which is marked by a crest of feathers and almost always in Ireland remain coastal.

If you are wondering how seabirds get airborne, here's an interesting sequence from the west of Ireland.

Here, a lone cormorant taking off from the calm surface of a lake in Connemara, County Galway, Ireland shows that it is basically running on water, you can see the splashes of water kicked up by those webbed feet as its wings begin to generate lift.

Quite a sight, a fine sunny summer's day and the sounds of wildlife all around.

Finally airborne.

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The much-maligned herring gull, Larus argentatus which is known in Irish as Faoileán scadán, seen here soaring and gliding above stormy waves on the Atlantic off the north coast of Ireland.

Seagulls in general may be associated with loud, aggressive food stealing behaviour but herring gulls are currently on the UK's Red List for endangered species.

In Northern Ireland, herring gulls experienced a population increase during the 1950s-1970s, in the Seabird Colony Register census from 1985-1988 there were 17,561 pairs of herring gulls in NI while in a follow-up survey, the Seabird 2000 census, only 722 pairs were recorded.

Ireland has lost large numbers of herring gulls in recent decades and it would seem that the western coasts of Ireland and Scotland have seen the largest declines in herring gull numbers in recent decades.

I have written about the fascinating fulmar before on Panoramic Ireland, here. The seabird is not native to Ireland nor Scotland, where I photographed this one.

Originally confined to a few islands in the Atlantic, off Iceland and Saint Kilda - a remote Scottish island the birds have now spread across Scotland, Ireland, Wales and England. Scotland is still home to 97% of the British population.

Young fulmars spend five years fully at sea, coming back to land to choose a colony after that but even then they won't breed for another few years. They can live for over forty years.

In this image you can see the tube-nose from which the tubenose family get their name, the birds possess a gland which helps to process, store then eject saline through the tube - salty water collected when diving for fish in the north Atlantic.

Fulmar comes from Norse, it means foul gull and relates to the stinking stomach oil that the bird regurgitates in order to deter threats. It matts the feathers of other birds and it covers other animals (humans too) with the stinky non-soluble fluid that can destroy clothes.

You've been warned - keep your distance! Enjoy these majestic fliers from afar.

A recent visit to the coast brought me to a seabird sanctuary where I photographed many types of wild birds including puffins, razorbills, fulmars and guillemots.

This image, and the others below, made me think of the famous Black Sabbath song War Pigs with its lyrics changed to "Guillemots gathered in their masses, just like witches at black masses..."

Guillemots breed on land between May and September in Ireland, laying eggs directly on to rock - no grassy ledge or built nest.

Recent weeks have seen me photographing nightlife rather than wildlife at many concerts in Dublin and Belfast, including Whitesnake, Queen and Bryan Adams.

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The fulmar Fulmarus glacialis is not a native bird to Ireland, although it is now resident here all year round having first been recorded on the island in 1911.

It is similar in size to a seagull but is a member of the tubenose family or procellariids, more commonly known as petrels.

It spends much time gliding, as it was when I photographed it here, using little energy to ascend and descend then flying low over the surface of the ocean - a common trait of petrels. Indeed the fulmar is related to albatrosses.

Each year the fulmar will return to the same ledge on the same cliff and will often mate for life. It lives for over 40 years and is a pelagic feeder of any type of fish.

The upper feathers are grey with brown feathers often visible, though most guides fail to mention these they are very evident in the image above. Undersides are white and the fulmar has a distinctive blue portion of the nose.

The fulmar is one of Ireland's fascinating seabirds, fantastic when seen in flight.