"Have you ever eaten a cormorant?" was a question thrown out at the end of a recent piece on that bird. Ronan Henderson of Roundstone, Connemara, writes to say that he hasn't ever but has spoken to one who made a regular habit of it. "Many years back, when in command of a vessel entering Bergen in Norway, we had on board a local pilot who told me that he was fond of hunting/fowling, and that he was looking forward to knocking-off a few birds during the coming weekend. I asked him what kind of birds he went after - going through various duck, geese etc. No, he said, he did not know the name in English, but would point out one to me. Coming round a bend, he pointed to a group of cormorants drying their outstretched wings on a rock.
I was amazed, and asked him if they were not tough and fishy ... No, he said, because the fat was in and under the skin and he skinned the bird completely, and, I think, put it in a weak brine for some hours. Then he dissected it, and together with the usual vegetables casseroled or potboiled it. He called his friends in, and they drank akvavit and ate the bird."
Our Roundstone friend told the pilot that where he came from the `cailleach dubh' did not come high on the list of delicacies and he told me we did not know what we were missing. "I wonder if it was true," writes Mr Henderson. Well, the cormorant looks scraggy and black and awkward, but we do eat ducks that live, like them, on fish, and ducks that live on unknown "small water animals," according to the books. Is it just because of the cormorant's unappealing, even ugly look that we think it couldn't possibly be edible? It doesn't, as far as we know, live off carrion.
Most of us will never know, for, big snag, the cormorant is now a protected species. The wildlife people were asked if it was not possible for, say, the owner of a fish farm to get a licence to shoot the bird if damage was being done to his stocks. The answer is that it needs to be a very convincing case, and not many licenses to shoot are issued. After all, there are ways of scaring the bird off, without gunning it down. So we will probably never be able to try out the Bergen recipe our correspondent describes in his most interesting letter.