Cormorants 



tured them, and brought them squirming to its master's feet. 

 A few English noblemen still divert themselves with this medi- 

 aeval pastime, according to Professor Alfred Newton of Cam- 

 bridge University; and it is still in vogue among the Chinese 

 fishermen, who find the skill of the cormorants more profitable 

 than their own. Happily these birds are well cushioned with air 

 spaces just under the skin to break the shock when they dive 

 from a height and strike the water. The gluttony of a cormorant 

 has passed into a proverb. It will continue to hunt every fish in 

 sight, day after day, for its equally greedy masters, that only whet 

 the birds ravenous appetite from time to time, by removing its 

 collar and allowing it to swallow an unenvied prize. 



In some parts of the United States, but chiefly in the Bay of 

 Fundy and beyond, the double-crested cormorants retire to nest 

 in large companies on the ledges of cliffs along the sea, or in low 

 bushes or bushy trees inland. The nest consists of a mass of 

 sticks and sea-weed, and both it and its vicinity look as if they 

 had been spattered over with whitewash, owing to the bird's 

 unclean habits. When the four or six eggs are first laid, they 

 are covered over with a rough, chalky deposit that is easily rubbed 

 off, showing a bluish-green shell beneath. The young, that are 

 hatched blind, have not even down to cover their inky-black 

 skin. It takes fully two years to perfect the beautiful iridescent 

 black plumage worn by adults. For a time the nestlings are 

 fed with food brought up from their parents' stomachs; and so 

 active is the cormorant's digestion that a fish caught by one is 

 said to have reached a stage fit for baby food between the time the 

 bird catches it in the water and transports it in its stomach to its 

 adjacent nest. On shore these birds rest in an almost upright 

 position, because their legs are set far back on their bodies, which 

 also necessitates using the stiff tail as a prop. Doubtless this 

 tail, that is used also as a rudder or paddle, adds to the cormo- 

 rant's extraordinary facility in swimming under water. 



79 



