THE COMMON OR GREAT CORMORANT. 
247 
sooner or later, according to the presence of the fish. Oil the 
latter day a flock of above a hundred cormorants was observed to 
to bear down upon the estuary from the direction of Strangford 
Lough, and were, at first sight, owing to the great number, mis- 
taken for wild geese : they soon broke up into divisions, of which 
that already noticed was one, and betook themselves to different 
parts of the bay. So early as the 3rd of August, 1850, 1 observed 
a flock of seventeen fly over the point of the Kinnegar, and near to 
the town ; but within an hour they returned again. On looking 
to the food in two birds killed here, I found in one the remains 
of fish and a perfect specimen of the crustacean Pandalus annuli - 
cornis (shrimp-like in size) ; the other contained an eel about 
fifteen inches in length, and, with the usual perversity of the 
species, having its head turned towards the throat of the bird. 
The weight of one of these cormorants, a male, was 7 lbs. 6 oz. 
(avoirdupois) . 
An accurate observer, who, from living on the shore of Belfast 
Bay, and shooting a great deal, had ample opportunities of study- 
ing the habits of the cormorant, states, in opposition to writers 
generally on the subject, that he has never seen it throw a fish, 
awkwardly caught for being swallowed, into the air, or clear of the 
bill, that it might be seized in a favourable position for that pur- 
pose, but, to use his own words, c< the fish is instead shifted in 
the bird’s bill and different snatches are made at it until it comes 
right, just in the manner that a dog acts under such circum- 
stances.” Nor has he ever seen it fly to the land with any 
object ; nor swim with its head under water when looking out for 
food ; — “ it affords the fowler no such chance of a shot.” He 
considers it to keep quite under water when fishing, and to dive 
in search of prey, before unseen. His reason for this opinion, is, 
that the bird comes up frequently without prey, which he believes 
is always brought to the surface to be eaten, from the circumstance 
that very small fish are sometimes in its bill when the bird re-ap- 
pears after diving. Large fish he has often seen it shake, as a dog 
does a rat, to render them manageable ; he has observed it to eat 
more small flounders (Platessa flesus ) than any other fish (owing 
