Take a look at the photograph top right. We must all have seen a cormorant doing this but why do they do it? Conventional wisdom says it is to dry their wings which obviously get saturated after they have been diving.
This may well, of course, be very true but it raises the question that why do cormorants need to do it when other diving birds do not? You never see duck or grebes, for example, drying their wings after a fishing expedition.
The answer could well be that the cormorant has much bigger wings and, as it spends more time flying than a duck or a grebe, then drying them out is more important. However, I have heard a theory that this posture aids their digestion. cormorants swallow their catch whole, head first, and it takes a good while to get the fish right down the throat and into the stomach. Holding out its wings like this opens the passage way and eases the flow. There may be truth in both of these.
The cormorant is common in coastal areas and large lakes and rivers of lowland Dorset with hundreds in Poole harbour, for example, in winter. Along the higher, rocky cliffs they are often replaced by their more seafaring cousin, the shag.
In the Sidmouth area they can be seen on the stone groynes and sometimes fishing in shallow waters off shore. They can also be seen in open areas along the River Sid and one, in particular, has discovered that when the tide is low enough to expose the wear near the Ham field, fish can get trapped behind the wall and have no escape and it is easy pickings for said cormorant (see photo bottom right).
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