Catching Your Cormorant

Cormorant on a break from fishing

 Catching your cormorant, with of course a camera, though in Japan, there are parts of the country where these spectacular birds are used to catch fish. The birds are controlled with a snare tied around the throat. this allows the bird to swallow small fish, but prevents it from eating the larger fish which the bird's trainer will take for his own.

Today, we went on a family hike through the local bird sanctuary where we found one of these diving for fish in the river - a wild one so he ate whatever he could catch! They are interesting to watch because they sit quite low in the water with basically just their neck protuding, very different to most waterfowl which seem to bob along on top. Managed to catch it taking off from the river which made Professor Ewan's day.

Wonderful day with warm weather, but back to howling wind and freezing temperatures again from tomorrow : (

Video was taken of today's trip and is one of the Family Pet series.