A creature previously unknown to me has appeared in the pond. After a few moments with the binoculars and a glance at Peterson's classic Field Guide to the Birds along with some intense internet research, I could make a positive identification. It's a double-crested cormorant, usually found at the seacoast but sometimes in rivers and lakes, which has been "recently extending its range" and which has just now arrived on Hackett Hill Road. Although it's exciting to encounter a new bird, especially a large graceful swimmer and diver, the cormorant arrives tarnished by a bad reputation. Cormorants form very large colonies and over-indulge their voracious appetites -- they gobble fish, frogs, salamanders, clean out the lakes. Is it after our trout? They've become a pest on Lake Champlain, where the authorities are "taking measures" to reduce the population. I don't mind one cormorant, but I certainly don't want to host a horde of them.
When the first wild turkey arrived, about fifteen years ago, everyone would stop and stare. Now turkeys are as common as pigeons, but as far as I can tell, do no damage (unless they get into the garden, which they haven't, so far). They eat insects, not frogs. Plus they're good eating. I've never heard of anyone salivating over roast cormorant.
I'd trade the cormorant, and the turkeys for that matter, for some of the birds that have disappeared over the last forty years. We used to have a symphony at dawn and dusk -- now there's hardly a peep, except for the robins and the bluejays. I'd give a lot to hear a white-throated sparrow at daybreak. It's been years since I've seen a bluebird, a wren, an indigo bunting, an oriole, a purple martin, a red-wing blackbird, a sandpiper, a tanager, a vireo. Or seen the swifts overhead. Even our once-abundant swallows have become rare. Where are they?
[November 9, 2020: the cormorant never returned. Nor did any of his friends or relatives.]
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