In my recent blog post about Turtles, I mentioned an article I read about the Loch Ness monster. That article had several references to the blog lochnessmystery.blogspot.com, which I hadn't heard of, so I started following it via my RSS reader.
Saturday afternoon I read the latest post from the blog, about an unidentified object in a recent photo of Loch Ness, which most people thought looked suspiciously like the head of a snorkeler. Shortly after reading that I decided to go for a walk around the neighborhood. That article must have put me in a Loch-Ness frame of mind, because as I walked along the large pond near our house, I saw a long thin neck and head of a bird sticking out of the water, and I thought "That's funny, that looks almost exactly like a small Loch Ness monster." I also though it was unusual, because the birds we usually see on the pond (ducks, geese, herons, swans, egrets) always float on the water, never underneath.
The neck and head then disappeared underwater. With my curiosity piqued, I pulled my phone out and started recording a video, waiting for the bird to reappear. About 15 seconds later the head and neck reappeared, and eventually the bird's body surfaced and it flew away.
After I got home, I asked Wendy, who has become the resident bird expert in our household, thanks to the 2 bird identification apps she installed on her phone, what kind of bird it might have been. She plugged in the facts I reported into one of the apps, and said "It was probably a double-crested cormorant." After looking up more information online, that sounds right.
First, here's a close-up of the head and neck as it reappeared:
And of the bird as it flew away (it stayed just above the water as it flew):
When I looked up more information about cormorants, one of the first things I read was from this article:
They can dive up to 25 feet deep in pursuit of prey or cruise just below the surface with only their long necks and heads above the water — giving the appearance of a periscope or a cross between snake and bird.
That describes exactly what I saw! The article also mentions that cormorants nearly went extinct due to "pesticides and persecution": because they eat fish, cormorants were viewed as pests by commercial fishermen and fish hatcheries. In 1974, only 12 cormorant nests existed in Illinois, all in 2 trees along the Mississippi River. But, after the pesticides were banned, they've become common again in the state. By 2018, there were 40,000 nesting pairs in the Great Lakes area. That's quite a comeback!
I also read this article ("Cool Cormorants") that had some neat facts:
- Cormorant feathers are not waterproof. Instead, they get waterlogged, which helps them sink and dive better.
- After exiting the water, they sit in the sun with their wings spread open, to help dry their feathers.
- Their short wings are great for use as rudders under the water, but it comes with a price: "cormorants have the highest energy cost of any flying bird".
- After eating they regurgitate pellets containing fish bones and other indigestible parts.
This evening, Wendy and I went for a bike ride around the neighborhood. At one point, we passed by the pond and there happened to be a cormorant sitting in plain sight on the shore:
It seemed fairly oblivious to what was going on. An SUV stopped briefly so the driver could get a good look at it. A couple out for a walk stopped to watch it, and then Wendy and I parked our bikes next to it so I could take the picture. The cormorant seemed completely unconcerned about all the attention. I then remembered that as I was walking around Saturday afternoon, I saw the dead body of a dark-colored bird floating along the shore. Now I wonder if it could have been this cormorant's mate.
Finally, I'm not the only one to think that cormorants look like a small Loch Ness monster. A quick Google search turned up several other articles making the same observation, including this one from, funnily enough, The Oklahoman.