Swans' feathers are not as white as snow.
Would the crook-necked bird I saw serpenting across the surface of the harbour earlier today have been a cormorant? In which case, why the white neck? Sadly, this is the best photo I could get.
Maybe I'll by a pack of frozen prawns and squid and feed them from the shore, enticing them close to me with the promise of crustacea and cephalopoda. A crazy plan, but it might just...
2 comments:
I didn't think it was a cormorant because of the way it moved, and because there were some other things that were more likely cormorants around.
If it is a black-throated diver, that raises the question of why the throat should be the only white bit on it. But that's an SEP of taxonomy rather than anything else.
Don't bring the telescopic lens unless you really want to. The birds are quite friendly and can be brought (cf. eiderduck) almost to your feet by judiciously applied bread. Or maybe squid, but I haven't tried that yet.
Also, if you bring the lens, then you'll have less space to bring back the exciting fruitbowl that Marian and I bought while she was out here.
The bird was surprisingly big - I'd say a little smaller than a grey goose (there are lots of them here, and I know how big they are). Certainly substantially larger than an eiderduck, because it was swimming near a crowd of them and was bigger.
Dad says (although he doesn't say why, but I trust him a lot on things like this) he thinks it was more likely a red-throated diver.
The grey goose is called taxonomically anser anser, which is a nice thing to know.
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