I remember as a young boy I once saw a sketch in a book of a man on a small boat, probably some kind of sampan skiff , he had a conical hat on so I presume he was Asian, and he had a long pole, and on the pole was a line with a bird tied to it, at the time I thought the bird had got tangled in the fishing line and was probably after the fish the man had caught…how wrong I was … Cormorant fishing is a traditional fishing technique in which fishermen use trained cormorants to catch fish in rivers. Historically, cormorant fishing has taken place in China and Japan, Greece, North Macedonia, and briefly also England and France.

To control the birds, the fishermen ties a loose snare near the base of the bird’s throat. The snare does not stop the bird from swallowing small fish, but prevents the bird from swallowing larger fish, which are held temporarily in their gullet. When a cormorant has caught a fish in its throat, the fisherman brings the bird back to the boat and has it regurgitate the fish.

The name “cormorant” is a contraction of the Latin words corvus and marinus, which taken together mean “sea raven.” Cormorants are also popular in many myths and superstitions. In the Greek tale of Ulysses, after a storm broke the mast of Ulysses’ raft, a sea nymph disguised herself as a cormorant and handed Ulysses a girdle to keep him afloat while he swam to shore. In Norwegian myths and folklore, three cormorants flying together are said to be carrying messages and warnings from the dead. In Ireland and some other places, seeing a cormorant perched atop a church steeple is a warning of bad luck to come.

Along the Southern African coastline there are four species of cormorant, three species are considered seabirds and are endemic to the Benguela current, namely the Bank cormorant, Crowned cormorant and Cape Cormorant. The fourth species, the White breasted cormorant is found mainly in freshwater bodies such as estuaries but there is also a group of these white breasted cormorants that are fond in the marine environment.

Cormorants are expert divers and can dive as deep as 45 meters, they speed along underwater via their webbed feet, using their wings as rudders, they are pursuit divers like penguins. All versions of the cormorant have glands that secrete oil, used for keeping their feathers waterproof. However, this gland is not enough on its own to keep their wings dry, so cormorants are often seen spreading their wings to dry them. But cormorants are not only good divers, they can also fly up to 55 km per hour. Cormorants are pellet-makers, creating pellets out of the bones and scales of the fish they eat, then spitting them out, just like some owls.

The Cape cormorant is the most abundant seabird in the region and is characterized by its black feathers with an orange-yellow gape of the bill and a turquoise eye. The Cape Cormorant breeds at 69 different sites between Namibia and the Eastern Cape Province. The southern African population of Cape Cormorants has declined from more than a million birds in the early 1970s to about 120 000.

Cape cormorants are known to feed on large surface shoals, in flocks that often make up thousands of birds. Their tendency to fly in long lines or V-shaped flocks resulted in their Afrikaans name of ‘trek duiker’. The breeding period is from September to February in Southern Africa. They generally roost on offshore islands and are monogamous colonial nesters, living in large, tightly packed colonies. The nests are made from seaweed and sticks. Pilchards were once the main source of food for Cape Cormorants, but since the decline in pilchard stocks, anchovies have become their staple diet.

Cormorants are a lot more interesting than their drab black feathers would have suggested. The feathers definitely doesn’t always make the man or the bird in this case.

Join me on my Overberg birding tour to see all the different southern african cormorant bird species.