52 THE BIRD WATCHER 
to conquer such a feeling. As the birds which we 
thus caught were only in the water for a very little 
while, exhaustion could have had nothing to do with 
their self-surrender. The paralysis of fear ought, 
one would think, to have acted from the first, instead 
of supervening after a period of activity, but perhaps 
mere bewilderment, by preventing sustained exertion, 
may have produced a similar effect. Had it always 
been the parent bird that led the way on the occasion 
of the first leap from the rock, this powerlessness on 
the part of the young to leave it a second time might 
be attributed to her absence—but as far as I can 
remember there was no fixed rule in this respect. 
Both old and young birds generally went off with 
great unwillingness, but at other times this was not 
nearly so marked. 
In their swimming so quickly to the shore again, 
after their first plunge, and refusing thereafter to 
leave it, these young cormorants brought to my mind 
those amphibious lizards of the Galapagos Islands 
which Darwin mentions as never entering the sea to 
avoid danger, but, on the contrary, always swimming 
to land on the slightest alarm, though it might be 
there precisely that danger awaited them. This 
“strange anomaly ” Darwin explains in the following 
manner: “Perhaps this singular piece of apparent 
stupidity may be accounted for by the circumstance 
that this reptile has no enemy whatever on shore, 
whereas at sea it must often fall a prey to the 
numerous sharks. Hence, probably, urged by a fixed 
