CORMORANTS.
IN the grey December days, when our pools and meres are misty, dismal, and solitary, news is often brought that a "diver" has appeared upon the lake. The " diver " is, in nine cases out of ten, a cormorant, for a few of the birds often leave the cliffs and coast at this season, and take up their quarters on some inland water, where, if not disturbed, they will remain for weeks, working destruction among the tench and eels, but affording a most interesting exhibition of their skill in diving, which may then be watched at close quarters. On Charles Waterton's lake at Walton Hall, in the West Riding of Yorkshire, were constant visitors in winter, and were so tame that they would sit and dry their feathers on the terrace wall within ten feet of the drawing-room windows. Even on the Serpentine a single wild cormorant sometimes appears at the end of the year, though to judge by the non-success of human anglers, the stock of fish can hardly furnish fully a cormorant's Christmas-dinner.
The bird has an evil aspect, and an undeservedly bad name. In "Paradise Lost," Satan, breaking into Eden, changes his shape, and sits like a cormorant on the tree of life, "devising death to them who lived," and the post-classical legend of its metamorphosis, which Waterton recollected or invented, is perhaps the only cormorant-story which does not aim at discrediting it. "The cormorant," he writes, 'was once a wool-merchant. He entered into partnership with the bramble and the bat, and freighted a ship with wool. She struck on some rocks, and went to the bottom. This loss caused the firm to become bankrupt. Since that disaster, the bat skulks in his hiding hole till twilight, that he may avoid his creditors. The bramble seizes hold of every passing sheep, to make up for his loss by retaining part of its wool; while the cormorant is for ever diving into the waters of the deep, in hope of discovering where his foundered vessel lies." But the lAiltonian estimate of the cormorant is still the most popular, and the strong, silent, and methodical birds—
which, except in the neighbourhood of preserved fisheries, should be protected equally with the rooks on shore—are shot when possible, and allowed no law in the close time which other rock-fowl enjoy. The legal protection now extended to the latter was mainly due to a desire that the amenities of our coast-scenery should not suffer by their destruction ; and a plea for the preservation of the cormorant may be urged on even stronger grounds. They are far the largest and most striking in appearance of our common sea-fowl. A male cormorant is a yard long, and very strong and heavy ; and though more quaint than beautiful, whether flying, diving, or sitting on the rocks or buoys, it is a far more interesting creature than the seagull, a wonderful instance of adaptation of form to special needs, and of permanence of type enduring from remote ages; for the fossil cormorant hardly differs from those which are now fishing from the cliffs in which their petrified ancestors are embedded. Our common "great black cormorant" is not only the most representative type of his family, but a link with the inhabitants of the shallow seas of both the old and new worlds. He is found throughout Europe, in North Africa, Egypt, and the greater part of Asia, in Eastern North America, and, a little changed by distance, in New Zealand and Australia. Lastly, he is the only bird, except the hawks and falcons, which is trained to assist man in the capture of living prey ; and in this vocation he is of all birds, by sense, memory, and affection, incomparably the best.
Cormorant colonies are scarce on our Eastern and South. Eastern coasts. They need high and inaccessible cliffs in which to nest and roost together, and no such cliffs are seen from Flamborough Head to Dover. The main colonies of the Eastern Channel are those in the chalk. cliffs of the Isle of Wight. Thence the birds fly every day at dawn to their fishing-grounds, and thither each night they return at dusk, with the regularity of City men travelling home by rail. The business of the day is, so far as the writer has observed, as carefully regulated as their times of departure and return. The roosting-place on the "Main Beach" cliff at Bembridge is invisible from the crest above, for at that point the brow of the cliff overhangs the face. At daybreak the whole colony leave the crag, and flying up into the turf above, settle on a large slope which gives them a complete command for many hundred yards inland, and there arrange their feathers and complete their toilet after the night's repose. Then the company divide, flying in pairs or small groups, arranged in the perfect V formation, to separate and apparently predetermined fishing. grounds. In the Solent fish are less plentiful than they were, and each bird seems to frequent some particular station, which it does not leave till dusk. The greater numbers fly out to sea, as if bound on a journey to France, but others are "long- shore " birds, and may be seen at their posts throughout the season. Five or six haunt the buoys which lie between the Foreland and the Nab Light. No strange cormorant is allowed to sit on these buoys. If one should appear, the local bird rises from the deeps, and, flying low and straight, charges the intruder and hurls him into the sea. Among the anchored sea-marks are one or two "cage-buoys," inside which hangs a bell. At times a cormorant squeezes through the bars, which are set so as to make it possible to enter from without, but difficult to emerge. The bird would starve if not rescued; but to open the cage and eject the cormorant is no easy matter. The buoy rolls and swings, and the cormorant, ignorant of the intended rescue, "holds the fort," defending the entrance with the greatest courage. The ingenious Bern- bridge fisherman, whose method of lobster-catching at ebb- tide was described in the Spectator in August last, undertook to release one of these caged cormorants. He not only opened the cage, but proceeded to catch the bird, with the same indifference to pain which marks his method of lobster.catching with bare hands and feet. The cor- morant's beak cuts like a pair of shears, and his aim is as swift and unerring as that with which he seizes the fish below water. But the bird was mastered, tied, and laid in the boat, though the captor's hands were cut in every direction. One pair of cormorants always frequent the harbour, where they find numbers of sand-eels. These birds are far tamer than the rest, seldom rising to fly unless the small yachts and " half-raters " racing round the harbour approach within fifty yards. Daring a gale, when the harbour is too rough for small boats, the writer has seen a cormorant use from the water, flap leisurely to one of the small yachts lying-up just opposite the sailing club-house, and there sit, drying its feathers, within twenty-five yards of the quay.
On Christmas Eve a strong gale was blowing down the Channel, and the breakers made it difficult for the birds to go to their seaward fishing-grounds. As a cormorant cannot go long without food, several pairs spent the morning in diving and fishing inside the reefs of Bembridge Ledge, rising and disappearing at a few yards' distance from the line of shore. There they remained, using every minute of their time, until the roaring breakers on the outer ledge climbed the barrier, and filled the wide basin within with foam and tumult.
The evolutions of the cormorant below water, where it can fish at depths as great as 200 ft., propelled solely by its feet, have already been described in the Spectator, from observa- tions of the small green cormorant at the Zoo. The brain. power of this species is well illustrated by an account of its combined fishing parties, seen by Mr. John G. Millais, in Table Bay, and described in his work on South Africa, re- ferred to in the Spectator of December 21st. "Their ordinary method of fishing," says Mr. Millais, "is that of diving in the shallows, after the usual manner of their species. But instinct (?) and an excessive abundance of their natural food has taught these birds that by uniting their forces a full stomach can be obtained with far less trouble than by the methods which they usually employ. With the exception of one species of North American pelican, the plan is one that is not followed by any sea-bird that I know of. The cormorants, to the number of ten or twenty, form line, each bird being within a couple of feet of its neighbour, and swim along the shore at right-angles to the beach, the bird nearest the land being only just able to float. In this manner they advance, constantly inspecting the water beneath by immersing their heads and necks, until a shoal of small fish is found. Then the whole line wheels at once shorewards, most of the birds diving together, thus frightening the fish, which escape before them in such large quantities that a number are forced right out of the sea on to the beach itself. These tactics are generally rewarded by a plentiful repast, each bird resting on its breast among the stones, and gobbling up the fish as they spring on all sides, attempting to regain their natural clement." On the Chinese rivers, where from six to twelve trained cormorants are used to fish from a single boat, two or three birds will often unite to drive the fish from one to the other ; and the experience of English sportsmen who have re- vived the old sport of cormorant-fishing introduced by the Dutch in the sixteenth century, is that the birds are very in- telligent and become as tame as dogs. In China, where the cormorants are domesticated, and reared from eggs hatched by common hens, they are whipped if they misbehave ; and the writer inclines to think that a short dog-whip was used as an emblem of authority by the most successful trainer of cormorants in this country.
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