A Pygmy Cormorant stuffing itself stupid

There’s a Pygmy Cormorant, Microcarbo pygmaeus, swimming and diving on the lake. It’s too far away for a decent photograph as the hide we’re sitting in is 70 metres away from the far bank and Pygmy Cormorants are, well, small. It’s when it pops up nearer with a huge fish that I finally get my chance.

Pygmy Cormorants aren’t seen in the UK, but I do wonder why. Surely it’s only a matter of time before destruction of our climate means they spread here. We have plenty of anglers they can annoy; and bird watchers they can delight. It seems there are plenty of twitchers excited by the destruction of the natural world bringing them another ‘patch tick’ for them to twitch. Personally I’ll be mourning the destruction and chaos brought on by our alteration of the climate, not looking forward to one of its side-effects.

It takes minutes to swallow the fish. Maybe that’s a ploy to make sure it’s truly dead. You wouldn’t want one of those still wriggling in you, would you?