And people think *I’m* picky. Clearly they need to spend more time watching a cormorant trying to get a fish angled just so in their beak, the easier to swallow it, my dear.
At the same park that is home to the noble, levitating roadrunner, a large artificial pond provides fishing opportunities for adults, for kids, and, it turns out, for cormorants. Of course, these opportunities aren’t necessarily close to shore, which accounts for the quality or lack thereof of these fully zoomed, heavily cropped photos.
I took these photos, and many more, in the space of about five minutes. Excluded, for your viewing pleasure:
- shots where the duplication was ridiculous (And here’s the fish hanging from the cormorant’s beak at a subtly different angle. Is that fish still, um, kicking?)
- shots where the cormorant had his back to me
- shots where the cormorant had his head underwater, apparently dropping the fish and catching it again at a better angle (or a different one, anyway)
- shots where the cormorant finally had the fish in its beak at the desired angle and it could hardly be seen, before it couldn’t be seen at all
It’s a 90-degree problem. The cormorant catches the fish most easily broadside, but swallows it most easily lengthwise. And swallowing is all it can do.
There is nothing like spending five minutes watching a cormorant trying to eat one not-very-large fish to make me appreciate my past-their-best-before-date teeth.
Gosh, those are fantastic pictures, Isabel.
Tom
Tom – Thank you. One of the best features of digital cameras is their ability to take multiple shots with one press of the shutter button. It’s perfect for fast-changing scenes like this one. The camera sees things my eyes can’t by freezing the motion in tiny increments.
There’s a fallen branch by the side of the road leading to Christine’s house. I say it looks like a cormorant’s head; she says it looks like a snake. I suspect snakes may have to go through similar contortions as your cormorant to get that mouse or mole or whatever to go down head first.
Anyway, I now have visual proof that the branch looks like a cormorant.
Jim T – 🙂 In “the south” we see anhingas which I sometimes mistake for cormorants until I get a better look at their, um, foliage and the length of their necks. Their nickname is “snake bird.” So I think your discussion with Christine is a matter of you both being right.
Very nice sequence to show a piece of nature! Yes thanks to digital cameras to make it easier (and cheaper) than the film days.
It’s fun watching a great blue heron flipping a huge fish around in the same way but at a MUCH larger scale.
Jim R – I’ve seen a GBH with a fish just once, but I do see great and snowy egrets with some small fishes or translucent worms at Huntington Beach State Park. It’s an impressive display of flexibility and dexterity, really, catching something you just threw up into the sir.
Your pics really illustrate the awfulness of the fad, back in Mom and Dad’s university days, of swallowing live goldfish. Definitely still alive and wriggling all the way down.
Mary – Yuck, indeed.
As good as a movie! Sort of puts me off eating fish again!
Judith – I know, right? And I never know whether to cheer for the bird or the fish.
An amazing sequence, Isabel. You bring to light a reality about bird anglers that I have missed all these years from still shots. Catching a fish is only half of the story. A life lesson lurks therein, I feel certain.
Laurna – I was surprised to see how long the cormorant “played with” this fish, and I’m pretty sure it wasn’t play in the usual sense. A few times it looked to me as if the fish was oriented properly in the cormorant’s beak, only to see it dropped and re-attacked. I’m guessing the cormorant knows its own business best, or at least better than I do.