A regular sighting on my walks are cormorants.
There are a number of trees where the often gather, they are regular occupants on the islands
and can frequently be seen swimming, half submerged.
You can also see them in their characteristic ‘crucifix’ pose with their wings outstretched to dry.
Now they aren’t, to my eye, naturally beautiful, and seem slightly sinister, but I’m always pleased to see them and enjoy watching them.
I have previously described them as looking like a stealth bomber when they are in flight, but their take off from the lake reminds of a different aeronautical icon – the dam busters and in particular the bouncing bomb – admittedly in rewind mode. The bombs were dropped from the sky and bounced over the water, a cormorant taking off seems to bounce over the water before taking to the air.
As ever if you want to know more about the bird itself, the RSPB is a good place to start https://www.rspb.org.uk/birds-and-wildlife/wildlife-guides/bird-a-z/cormorant/
So rather than write about them, the habitats, what they eat, etc, I thought I would explore their place in history and culture. I would love to say this was my own idea, but the credit should go to Katy Mousinho who when I mentioned I was going to do a piece on cormorants immediately said “Don’t they appear in Milton’s Paradise Lost?”
Of course, she was spot on and the direct quote reads "Thence up he [Satan] flew, and on the tree of life, The middle tree and highest there that grew, Sat like a cormorant; yet not true life."
The words come from a passage where Satan approaches Eden for the first time. He leaps over the thicket wall and is met by a vista of an idyllic world, home to countless varieties of animals and trees. He sees the tallest of the trees, the Tree of Life—and next to it, the forbidden Tree of Knowledge. He disguises himself as a cormorant and flies up to the top of the tree of life where he notices two creatures walking erect among the other animals. They are Adam and Eve.
The image of a cormorant sitting atop of the tree of life immediately conjured up images of the cormorants I see atop of trees
My curiosity was now suitably piqued so I decided to dig a bit deeper and see why Milton had chosen a cormorant. According to what I discovered while writing the book Milton was living across the road from St James’ Park where the King owned numerous cormorants that had been trained to catch fish. There was even an office of Master of the Cormorants in the Royal Household.
It turns out that cormorants' fishing skills have been used in lots of different countries around the world, and that this has gone on for centuries. Archaeological evidence suggests that cormorant fishing was practised in Ancient Egypt, Peru, Korea and India, and still happens in China and Japan, where it reached commercial-scale level in some areas
Other cultural references include, in Norway, where in numerous tales spirits of those lost at sea come to visit their loved ones disguised as cormorants. This may in part explain why the Norwegian municipalities of Røst, Loppa and Skjervøy have cormorants in their coat of arms.
In fact, cormorants feature regularly in heraldry and medieval ornamentation, usually in their "wing-drying" pose, which was seen as representing the Christian cross, and symbolizing nobility and sacrifice
As I’ve said I’m not sure nobility and sacrifice are my strongest associations. I’ll stick with bouncing bombs or perhaps the more peaceful skimming stones.
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