BT Wild ART - A unique Journey to the wilderness: Fishing Bird

Hello everyone, hope you are enjoying your weekend. So what do you want to know after city birding and Magical Cat? Even I was thinking what to offer? and then while going through portfolio I got few pictures of little bird, which is a fantastic fishing expert but mostly ignored because the focus is always on big or migratory birds hence thought to throw some lights on this lovely creature. Today’s expert bird is none other than Cormorant, I am sure you may have seen it but not at all aware about the quality of this little cute bird.

In my views, we should consider all every little bird while we are on a trip; you never know when such a common bird will give you uncommon movement. So let us move to the next section to learn things about little but cute bird Cormorant.

Art of Fishing

As I mentioned Cormorant is an expert fisher, one of the reason is kind of habitat this bird has but catching a fish is different from some of the other aquatic birds like Pond Heron or say Egret.

Before I explain details let me share my experience with Cormorants in recent time, I have been chasing cormorants on my various birding trip such as city birding, Bhigwan, Bharatpur etc. I monitored closely and got some wonderful frames out of it.

Similarly, like others, I was ignoring Cormorants but one fine day I saw Cormorant taking dip dive in water from one place and coming out from another place at a distance, this activity pulled my attention toward little bird so I continue to observe it more and leaving Flamingo behind. Cormorant did this for four to five times and came up with fish in its beak, the unique pattern was amazing to eyes, and the most attractive part of fishing was throwing fish out and catching it again before it swallows inside. I was so amazed by the unique behaviour as it gave me lovely frames. This fantastic moment taught me a lesson that even common and not so attractive bird can give you one of the best time ever. In nutshell, respect everything offered by Mother Nature, it will surely payback with unique and life capturing moments.

I know you would be wondering that how it is possible for such little small size bird to act such stunt let me update you on the support system that makes this behaviour possible.

Cormorants are expert divers, dive up to 4 minutes looking for food. Some types of Cormorant diving as deep as 45 meters (148 feet). They can stay underwater for more than one minute!

Cormorants have special feathers, which allow the water to penetrate, enabling the bird to swim well under water

The bill is long, thin and sharply hooked. Their feet have webbing between all four toes, which helps to manage dive. They speed along underwater via their webbed feet, using their wings as rudders

Cormorants have short wings for a flying bird due to their need to swim. Because of this, they have the highest flight cost of any flying bird

They dive from the surface, though many species make a characteristic half-jump as they dive, presumably to give themselves a more streamlined entry into the water

Now we learn the diving strategy of Cormorants, let us dive into the other important details to complete the journey of God's lovely creature.

Fantastic Facts

Cormorants are a species of aquatic birds, sometimes known as “shags.” They belong to the Phalacrocoracidae family of birds. Cormorant colonies can have up to 4,000 members. Many of the species will hunt together

Cormorants are usually black, brown, or greyish. During the mating season, some cormorants develop brilliant white or blue patches on their throats or thighs

Cormorants build nests on rocky crags to protect their babies. Sometimes they use old blue heron nests high in trees

Cormorant mothers and fathers take turns sitting on their eggs. Once the babies are born, their parents feed them half-eaten fish

Do you know why Cormorants spread their wings out in the sun? Some scientists believe cormorants don’t have protective oil in their feathers like other waterfowl. They might be drying their feathers

Some species of cormorant include: the double-breasted cormorant, little black cormorant, Indian Cormorant, European shag, rock shag, Bounty shag, Japanese cormorant, Auckland shag, Cape cormorant, crowned cormorant, Crozet shag, and the Georgia shag

Cormorant colonies can have up to 4,000 members. Many of the species will hunt together

I hope you will surely capture Cormorants on your next wilderness trip, do capture them in different activities, and co-relate them with things I have explained here. While ending the blog leaving you with some lovely pictures in Deadly DSLR section