CORMORANT. 
.59 
Several Cormorants may be seen at a time sitting side 
by side on the water’s edge, looking out for fish ; and if 
they are frightened, they rise up to a sufficient height 
in the air to be out of reach of gun-shot. 
When this bird is met with at a distance from the 
sea it frequently seems to lose its presence of mind, and 
is easily approached and captured ; when winged, it defends 
itself to the last with its beak, and is then as dangerous 
as the bittern under similar circumstances. Hawks, and 
even the white-tailed, or sea-eagle, have experienced the 
power and valour of the Cormorant. 
Cormorants flock together in parties of thirty or forty 
and upwards, and occasionally in numbers of a much larger 
amount, above a thousand being sometimes seen to con¬ 
gregate. 
The coarse call-note of this species sounds like the word 
kraw, krell. 
The food of this bird consists in fish of various kinds, 
from eels to plaice, provided they are not too large ; but 
the birds assist each other frequently in killing the more 
unmanageable fishes : a fish of the size of a herring or 
small mackerel it can swallow whole. 
These birds have also been seen to swallow eels of 
two feet in length, partly, leaving the tail hanging out 
of their mouths until the head was digested. This fact 
being rather startling, at first view may need some explanation, 
which we are quite prepared to afford. The digestibility 
of fish is too well known to need any comment; but we 
can show that under some circumstances it takes place with 
a rapidity almost incredible. While writing this article I 
was speaking with an experienced angler on the subject, 
who told me that the same morning he had been fishing 
for jack, and had a run, as the expression is, leaving it 
VOL. VII. 
G 
