A friend sends for Christmas a lovely print from one of her drawings, of a dozen or so cormorants on rock in the sea, flapping their wings or, wings outspread while digesting their dinner; some, maybe just asleep. The focus of this inspiration is just off Groomsport, County Down. A peaceful scene. Now, a couple of weeks later a gruesome photo spreads into two pages of the BBC Wildlife magazine. It shows a dead cormorant, shot by "a marksman employed by an angler", and spread over the corpses are 13 perch, the alleged contents of the bird's stomach, about four inches long, apparently skinless i.e. in process of digestion at the kill, and pinkly repulsive.
These birds are hearty feeders. Around the picture the pros and cons of seriously culling them, is argued. Against the proposition is a representative of the RSPS (is that Royal Society for the Protection or Preservation of Birds?).
His argument is condensed into four sentences set out over the article. One, People like birds and want to see them given appropriate protection. Two: the law allows for limited, local cormorant control to protect human interests from serious damage. Three: a cull could threaten cormorants' conservation status but is unlikely to improve fish stocks. Four: our wetlands and rivers can support healthy populations of both fish and their natural predators.
To all of this, the response must be, "as long as you are not a fish farmer."
The anti-cormorant view is given by a fisheries management consultant. When the birds stay on inland waters for months, he says, the effect can be dramatic. There are enough predator/prey relationships; cormorants add to this. Many fisheries managements, he claims, have been forced into culling the birds illegally. The process of getting a licence to shoot the birds is so long and often turned down anyway, that managers just shoot.
Cabot tells us that we have about 5,000 pairs, well scattered. Some of the young take themselves away to France, Spain and Portugal in the winter! The cormorant is the one with the white patch on chin and cheeks, also a white patch on the thigh in breeding times. Very like it is the shag - smaller, no white patch, thinner beak, 8,000 pairs. Has anyone ever eaten a cormorant or shag?