The Cormorant Wars
June 23, 2025 at 09:26PMCormorants have made a comeback in the Toronto Islands, but not everyone is happy about these “goth” purveyors of puke and tree-thwarting guano. “In 1990, there were six cormorant nests at Tommy Thompson Park; by 2007 there were 4,699,” writes Alexandra Kimball for The Local. Population control, which sadly includes cormorant culls, has allowed the tree canopy to rebound and at-risk plant species to gain a foothold, but cormorant consensus has been difficult to find. Can nonviolent cormorant coexistence be achieved?
As we near Hanlan’s Point, cormorants collect around the tips of trees, circle the sky in groups, and skid the lake’s surface to retrieve sticks and strips of floating plastic for their nests. Up close, the birds have goofy faces, long goose-like necks, and bright green eyes that look like faceted sequins. They seem to be part snake, their bodies liquifying as they dive beneath the water. One catches a small silver fish, swallows it, and then regurgitates it whole and (I think) alive. Occasionally, after a dive, they do the thing they’re most famous for, which is hang in the air or on a perch for a few seconds with their heads turned to the side and their serrated wings outstretched. This dramatic move has a biological purpose, directing UV rays at their bellies to turbo-dry their non-waterproof feathers. Its non-biological purpose is to make them look glam rock and cool. It makes me think of the Buffalo Bill robe-reveal moment in The Silence of the Lambs. It’s an intense, but ultimately brief experience.
from Longreads https://longreads.com/2025/06/23/the-cormorant-wars/
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