Greenwich Wildlife (4)
Jo has been watching a family of cormorants that "regularly perch on the old coal loading pier outside the power station, drying their wings and digesting their catch."She notes that that must mean that Greenwich has a fair abundance of unseen wildlife - the fish in the Thames. So the river must be pretty healthy - especially for a city waterway. I still don't much fancy a swim though...
Labels: birds, Green Greenwich, Greenwich Wildlife
posted by The Greenwich Phantom at
11:18
10 Comments:
Thanks for clearing that up.....I've had a long standing argument with my other half as to what birds these are.
We first saw them a couple of years ago and have noticed them around the river ever since. We recently saw about 7-8 of them 'sunning' themselves on the sand at Blackwall point with the resident seagulls.
By the way, have you noticed how there is more variety in the Seagull population these days? Maybe they are all getting the idea that it's easier to 'fish' for food in the rubbish dump than to actually stick to diving for it.
Just how 'Green' is that?
Do you ever see seals down there - a couple of months ago we were standing around on Enderby Wharf - and - you know that feeling you are being watched! There it was bobbing about in the water - and then some man came out of Alcatel with his lunch time sandwiches .......
Fine birds indeed! Someone told me they mate for life, live on the same river reach for all that time and enjoy wonderful longevity.
Is this true, birdy experts out there, or have I been deceived?
A year or so ago i spotted a group of Shags near that very spot and managed to capture some pictures.
http://pics.livejournal.com/yaruar/pic/0006ks39
They are indeed cormorants and very fine fishing birds they are too. You'll regularly see them perched on a post stretching their wings to dry them off.
I think their trick is to fly high and then when they've spotted their quarry they dive. Poor trout and salmon and the like have no idea what's about to hit them.
Yes, it is great that there is an abundance of fish in the river but sad also because the river is clean because there is no longer any industry left on it. From that point of view it is a dead waterway and you only have to laugh at the people buying their river appartments with nothing better to look out on than the hell of a passing riverboat disco and morond heaving over the side.
Shame THEY don't get divebombed by the cormorants.
..... and if there is any industry there they just complain (I could go on about it for hours)
Is it true that
'the common cormorant, or shag,
lays its eggs in a paper bag'?
Come on birders out there.
Where do they get the Paper bags from? Is there a Cormorant corner shop, or do they have a "Bag for life".
Yes, Gwaldys, I am sad to say it's absolutely true. I say "sad" because their fussiness in egg-laying spots comprises a large part of the decline of cormorants on the Thames.
They will only nest in good, old fashioned paper bags - indeeed, to be more precise,the old Co-op bags with the pale turquise lettering. Since the introduction of plastic, shags have spurned modern bags and started to look for other places. Copies of The London Paper and London Lite that litter the capital are "the wrong kind of paper," apparently, and attempts by conservationists to fool the birds by potato-cut printing "Co-Op" on the sides of ordinary brown bags have failed. They put this down to the slight change in font-size, which the eagle-eyed birds have spotted and realised the bags were fakes.
Short of re-opening the original Co-Op paper bag factory in Nantwich, the prognosis is poor for these once-numerous birds. Such is the fallout from the decline in Britain's industry.
Their is a chap I know in East Grinstead called Egbert Knosh, who has Europes largest collection of Co-op ephemera, I will drop him a line and see if he has any "doubles" he would be willing to swap for a good cause.
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