Wild Life in Wales 



he was so little disconcerted by my presence on the bank, 

 that he promptly bolted the fish before flying off. Yet in 

 spite of all his peccadillos, there is no overlooking the 

 added charm which one of these large birds lends to the 

 landscape. Whether on the water, upon the wing, or 

 silhouetted against the sky on some bare tree top, his 

 presence makes strongly for the picturesque. There are 

 one or two posts standing in the water near Glan Llyn 

 which were seldom without their Cormorant atop. In such 

 situations, with wings akimbo his clothes literally hung 

 out to dry after their wetting in the last fishing excursion 

 the attitude assumed by a Cormorant is often most grotesque, 

 and were it not for the constant turning of the snake-like 

 head, in the anxiety of its owner to guard against surprise, 

 one might almost be excused for mistaking the bird for a 

 graven image, some quaint device of the Heralds' College, 

 owing its creation solely to the imaginative genius of a 

 Lyon-King-of-Arms, rather than a living creature. When, 

 however, such figures are found duplicated too often upon 

 a trout-stream, the study of prototypes of heraldry begins 

 to pall upon the fisherman, and he is apt to find himself 

 pondering the question of where the limit of sentiment in 

 bird protection lies. 



One of the few redeeming qualities in a Cormorant, from 

 an economist's point of view, is the fact that, amongst the 

 fish it consumes, are a considerable number of eels, them- 

 selves more destructive to most kinds of freshwater fish, 

 including salmonidae, than is the bird. Sometimes a big 

 eel proves too formidable an antagonist even for a 

 Cormorant. The writer once assisted in the capture of one 

 whose struggles in the water attracted the attention of a 

 party of sea-fishermen. When lifted into the boat, in a 

 greatly exhausted state, the bird was found to have an eel 

 twisted tightly round its neck, the head of the fish having 

 been already swallowed and being so firmly held in its 

 throat by the coils of the eel that before it could be released 

 the Cormorant had expired. 



Owing to its rank, rather musky aroma, as well as to its 

 fish diet, a Cormorant hardly seems a likely bird to appeal to 



