(Phalacrocorax auritus)
Along with herons, loons and Canada geese, the great northern cormorants are my favorite birds. They don't form colonies on Lanark lakes as far as I know, and we only see them on local waters when the annual migration is on in October.
The loons and herons have already departed, and now the jewel-eyed cormorants are on their way south. They alight on shorelines, docks and piers, mooring posts, stumps and floating logs, and they clearly own the earth and the sky and the water, wherever they swim and perch and open their embracing wings to the sky.
I remember a colony of cormorants dancing on a rocky outcrop in Lake Nipigon years ago on a trip north. Then along comes another precious memory, a community of cormorants resting together in a foggy predawn river on their long way south. Such snippets are better than gold.
3 comments:
We get small colonies here during the early winter months and then I guess they go even further south.
Oh! I was so excited to see a cormorant while we were in England. We also saw one at our local park here in Georgia, and I want to do a post about this bird that hardly anyone notices.
and you capture the beautiful eye so well!
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