Country diary: A dozen cormorants, hunting in a pack

Knypersley Park, Staffordshire: One after the other they make quick-fire dives, exquisite ellipses of sinew and muscle"Sat like a Cormorant," Milton wrote of Satan in Paradise Lost, "devising death to them who lived." I recall these lines now because the fisherman I met at this lovely country park was of similar mind. "If that's a gun you've got," he said, referring to my camera and monopod, "can you shoot them; they steal all my fish." "Your fish?" I asked.Yet there was probably one point on which we agreed. Cormorants are better at catching fish than he is. The reservoir here is narrow but deep-watered and bound on both shores by steep-sided beech woods, which immerse the western half in a well of late afternoon winter shadow. Twelve cormorants, some of the southern race Phalacrocorax carbo sinensis, descended on to its silky green-black surface. Continue reading...