Last week’s Pied Cormorant was swallowing an over-sized fish which stayed ‘visible’ in its gullet while the bird dried its wings, fidgeted and finally hunkered down to digest its Christmas meal.
Pied Cormorant
Canon 5DIII, 1/1250, f/8.0, ISO 400
Birds have an oil gland (also called a preen gland or uropygial gland) which they use to oil their feathers and keep them waterproof – ‘like water off a ducks’ back’ – but this wouldn’t work well for diving birds as it would impact their capacity to dive by making them too buoyant. Cormorants use their oil gland to preen the feathers close to their bodies while leaving their wing feathers able to absorb water. This enables cormorants to dive deeply to catch fish while protecting their bodies from the cold.
It’s common to see diving birds like cormorants and darters drying their wings after emerging from the water. It’s less common to see their long, thin necks as distended as shown in these images. The width of the bird’s neck in the image above is particularly wide where its neck meets its body, it looks odd.
Pied Cormorant
Canon 5DIII, 1/1250, f/10, ISO 400
The bird looked very uncomfortable. It kept changing position and twisting its neck almost as though it was preening but it didn’t preen. It looked as though it was trying to push the large fish further along its gullet. At one point a dog walker went between the cormorant and the water, much closer to the bird than I was, but all the bird could do was look concerned, I don’t think it was capable of moving far at this stage.
Pied Cormorant
Canon 5DIII, 1/1250, f/10, ISO 400
After having dried its wings and fidgeted for some time the cormorant almost fell to the sand where it rested for several hours. Most of the time its eyes were closed and it would only occasionally squint in my direction. I waited until it opened its beautiful green eye to peek at me before pressing the shutter button for the image above.
I could have lowered the ISO and the shutter speed for these images but I was on the beach to photograph Hooded Plovers and their chicks and kept the settings ready in case the hoodies moved behind me.
Yesterday I was sent some fascinating statistics by Jetpack – during 2015 lirralirra was visited about 27,000 times by visitors from 114 countries – that is remarkable as lirralirra is just a little stand-alone site that pretty much relies on word of mouth to get around; in the early days I remember wondering if it would be more of a diary than a blog. So, a very special thank you to all lirralirra subscribers and visitors and I wish each and every one of you a wonderful 2016 filled with health, happiness and birdsong.
Happy birding, Kim
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