NZ 15: Cormorant & Friends
Saturday, August 9. 2008
Akaroa, NZ (May 28, 2008)
This is the last photo from Akaroa: from tomorrow, and for some time thereafter, there will be more images of the incredible Southern Alps landscapes. As the sun was getting low (and the sun was setting quite early while we were there, given that it was the beginning of winter), the harbour was getting a golden tint. After a day of fishing, this cormorant was spreading its wing, while the lazy seagulls were taking a nap.
Apparently cormorants are among the few sea birds that don’t have impermeable wings, and need to dry by spreading them in the sun. We saw several of them in this position during the day. It seems that the permeability of their feathers allows them to sink faster when they are fishing, because it avoids air bubbles from being trapped in their wet plumage. Some cormorants can dive as much as 45 meters deep.
When I was a kid I remember reading about cormorant fishing in the adventure books of Emilio Salgari (author of Sandokan, the Black Corsair and other exotic heroes. Cormorant fishing has been done for 1,300 years along the Nagara river in China (but also in Japan and Macedonia) by tying a snare at the base of the bird’s neck. As the bird dives to catch a fish, the snare prevents it from swallowing, and the fish is recovered by the bird’s owner when the cormorant returns to the boat. Emilio Salgari was writing of these fantastic tales of exotic places, pirates and adventurers from his apartment in Torino (the city in Italy where I was born), that he never left, inspired only by looking at postcards of the locations where his stories were set.
