CORMORANT: skilled fish hunter at odds with anglers

QUICK and agile underwater, the cormorant is a voracious hunter of fish - which is why so many anglers have come to detest it.

Mainly a seabird, the cormorant is increasingly deserting its natural habitat around our coasts for easier pickings inland.

Conflict between cormorant and angler is common and many birds are believed to have been killed to protect dwindling fish stocks.

Cormorants also congregate besides rivers or lakes where their acidic droppings can build up and kill off the trees they perch on - infuriating foresters and landowners.

Cormorants' growing unpopularity prompted a crackdown recently by the RSPB which said illegal slaughter of the birds must stop.

As one man was fined £250 by Luton magistrates for shooting a cormorant - the first conviction of its type in England - the RSPB appealed to anglers and fisheries managers to give the bird a break.

Julian Hughes, head of the RSPB's species policy section, said: "Three years of Government-commissioned research have found no evidence that cormorants damage fish stocks at a national level.

"In those exceptional cases, at a local level, where cormorants have been proved to cause problems, we want to work with fishery managers and anglers to seek lasting solutions. We have no desire to be in court seeing people being convicted for committing these needless crimes."

With its black, blue and bronze feathers offset by a flash of white around the face, the cormorant can be quite a handsome bird.

I often feel there is something almost prehistoric about it, especially when you see it standing stock-still with its wings outstretched, waiting for its feathers to dry.

Those feathers are specially adapted to become waterlogged fast and dispel buoyancy so that a cormorant wastes no time in pursuing its prey. Cormorants are large birds, as big as geese which they often resemble in flight since their broad wings beat the air at a similar steady pace.

Like geese, they even choose to fly in a similar 'V' formation when a number travel anywhere together.

But unlike the vegetarian goose, the cormorant has a long, dagger-like beak designed for catching and killing prey after its great webbed feet have powered it within range.

Eels are a favourite food but it will take most fish, setting its menu as wide as possible and thereby putting it on a collision course with anglers and commercial fishermen.

Years ago, some cormorants were kept as pets in Britain and allowed to dive to catch fish for their owners.

Today, this practice continues only in Asia where the birds are fitted with throat locks to prevent them eating the fish themselves.

Writer Christopher Isherwood, of 'Goodbye to Berlin' fame, once wrote:"The common cormorant or shag lays eggs inside a paper bag. The reason you will see no doubt - it is to keep the lightning out."

Nice line, although shags are a similar but separate species.

Perhaps this is just another example of cormorants being misunderstood. Today, life is definitely no cabaret for a cormorant.