CHAPTER XVIII 

 CORMORANTS AND ANGLERS 



The sea-fisher's indifference — Hatred of fresh-water anglers for this 

 bird — Voracity and digestion — Exempted from protection in certain 

 districts — Montagu's captive cormorant — Cormorant's daily con- 

 sumption — Cape fisheries — Enormous flights of cormorant — Uses of 

 these birds — Combined fishing raids — Pelicans — Habits of cormorants 

 — Shags — Do cormorants use their wings under water? — An object- 

 lesson — Milton's comparison — "As greedy as a cormorant." 



THE sea-fisher views with a more or less careless 

 indifference the greedy cormorant. He is no 

 great lover of his feathered rival, but there are still 

 plenty of fish in the salt water for them both. But 

 it is not so with the angler in fresh water, who knows 

 too well the ravages made by these birds on trout and 

 young salmon, which, in these days of a thousand 

 rods, where thirty years ago there were but fifty, can 

 ill be spared. And so the trout fisher, if, as occasionally 

 happens, he goes out upon the tide with some weather- 

 beaten man of the salt water, and notes the cormorant 

 sitting upon some rock or pole near the river- bar, 

 sunning its bronze -black back and getting up an 

 appetite for its next onslaught upon the fishes, tries 

 to inoculate his brother of the sea with some of his 

 own natural hatred against this feathered hog of the 

 shore-line. And, in truth, he has some reason for his 

 hate. Of all creatures, the cormorant is perhaps the 

 most voracious ; he has a marvellously rapid digestion 

 — not so rapid, perhaps, as that lightning swallower 



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