I was somewhat disconcerted to see this creature standing on a branch above the river, though I shouldn't have been. Closer inspection revealed it to be the young cormorant that I first spotted fishing a few days ago. It was drying its wings after a spell of diving. It is a very efficient fishing machine, diving underwater for long periods and surfacing some way from where it first disappeared from view, always with a beak full of fish that it swallowed as it broke the surface of the water.
So... not a black-winged harpy then... 'that fierce, sudden black-winged harpy, with its talons and its beak all cold and hard...' as Virginia Woolf put it in 'To the Lighthouse'. Phew. (That might, however, be the Loch Ness monster, rising from the water beneath!)
This works well in B&W, Jenny!
ReplyDeleteYou are certainly correct that cormorants are very efficient fishing machines. They were killing so many young salmon trying to reach the Pacific down the Columbia River, Oregon, USA that between 2015-17 the Environment Agency organized a large-scale official cormorant cull by the Engineers.
ReplyDeleteGreat shot.
ReplyDeleteThey are marvelous birds.
ReplyDeleteA bit of chills from the photo, dark, wings of what.
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