Great Cormorant, Bird of the Week XIII

It sounds like the kind of cursing Clark Kent’s boss at the Daily Planet used.

“Great cormorant, what are you writing Clark?”

As it happens, I do have a few cormorant pictures from last year’s mini-trip to Maine. Your job? Figure out which is a great cormorant versus which is a cormorant or a pelican. Because they are all there and I didn’t have a long enough lens to get details. I did have enough length to realize I was seeing pelicans, then doing a quick search and discovering that despite my firm belief that pelicans are warm weather birds, seven of them live in Maine which isn’t tropical.

All taken on the rocks right next to the old Bush mansion in Kennebunk, Maine. You can enlarge the pictures by clicking on them which might help you figure out which birds are which. I didn’t bring my birding lens, but I didn’t know I’d be taking pictures of birds. This is a great argument for having one “do it all” camera with a very long lens. You might not get the BEST pictures, but at least you are ready for anything.

Cormorants and American Eagles (aka Bald Eagles)

Back when both of us were working, we used to share a house on the water on Martha’s Vineyard. It was a magical place for bird watching. I identified (I was the second confirming identifier) of the return of the Willet to the island. I actually made the birding column in the Edgartown Gazette. This was a charming little paper owned by the New York Time. It had a whole page dedicated to everything about wildlife and a big separate column about birds. Making the paper in the birding column was thrilling. I talked about it until everyone told me to please shut up already.

This was a period when American (Bald) Eagles had come back to the Vineyard. For those who don’t already know, American Eagles are fishers. They hang around coastlines, lakes and rivers. They are also really BIG. If you catch something big, don’t be surprised if an eagle decided to grab it off your line. I am sure the eagles figured why do your own fishing when all those people will do it for you? No one ever argues with eagles. It’s pretty much a “Please take my fish, just keep those talons away from me!” They also have a beak that I’m sure could remove your hand at the wrist. No one wants to tangle one-on-one with an eagle.

Just about when the eagles were settling in and all we birders were very excited about it, the cormorants arrived. Cormorants are very efficient fishers. They can out-fish pretty much all the other shore birds. They were far more efficient than the eagles who found they had to fly further and further out to sea to get food for their big brown baby eagles.

People complained to the “bird people.” On the Vineyard, there’s actually a direct telephone line to the bird administrators. Everyone wanted them to get the cormorants to move somewhere else so we could keep the eagles.

They wouldn’t do it. They said that this was a natural environmental event. It wasn’t caused by people or habitat destruction. Nature had brought in a bird who fished better, so the eagles would have to find a place without cormorants.

They flew across the water and moved, for a couple of years, into our backyard. We still have the old nest. After a couple of years, our eagles discovered fishing was even better in the larger Merrimack river further north. These days, there are so many of eagles up there you can see them lined up in the trees along the banks. It’s easy to spot them. That bright white head gleams in the sun. And, as I said, they are very enthusiastic about stealing your fish. They show no fear of people, or maybe it’s all about the fish. You’d have to ask the eagle.

I think it’s an honor to have your fish stolen by an eagle.

Categories: #Birds, #gallery, #GarryArmstrong, #Photography, Anecdote

Tags: #gallery, #Photography, birds, Garry Armstrong, humor