Bound for hides in the Teifi Marshes reserve, I paused to lean against railings on the riverside path and a cormorant arrowed into view, threw up its broad, webbed feet to brake, and touched down on the water.
Seeing it reminded me of a morning 20 years ago in a fishing boat careening into Roonagh in County Mayo on green combers that were the aftermath of an Easter storm. A cormorant had kept us close, wave-skimming company. I asked the skipper, Jack Heanue, what the folk of Inishturk – an English-speaking island – thought of these weirdly beautiful birds.
“We call her the old hag of the sea. They say she brings bad luck, but I don’t think so. She shows us where the fish are, and only takes the little ones for herself. I like to see them.”
I thought of Jack – his watchful blue eyes, his powerful hands on the wheel, his measured, generous talk – as I focused my glass on the cormorant. Lovely bronze scalings of its plumage were prominent against an overall black that sunlight shimmered into green and purple iridescence, the whole rich palette set off by a startling yellow mandible-patch.
Sinister these birds may be to some, particularly when standing on rocks with wings held out to dry – a pose that always brings to mind Milton’s description of Satan in Paradise Lost: “up he flew; and on the Tree of Life … Sat like a cormorant … devising death.”
But they fascinate me and these days it’s humankind that devises death for cormorants. The Welsh government issues licences to shoot them on rivers.
As I watched, the cormorant drew back its long neck and with a serpentine spasm slipped under the surface. Bilidowcar he’s called in Welsh – Billy the Ducker, which is so descriptively apt. After 30 seconds, he re-appeared holding a dab perhaps 20cm across, which – after some effort – he bolted down.
“Not exactly little, Jack!” I thought with a smile. Though, perhaps, it was by west of Ireland standards.
