Conowingo in October – part 2
/Continuing the post about our trek to Conowingo Dam….
There were quite a few birds on the rocks just past the abutment. The camera zoom is put to good use to identify what’s there. I posted about the Bald Eagle and Black Vultures yesterday. The other two types of birds (other than gulls) were Double-crested Cormorants and a Great Blue Heron.
At first, I noticed cormorants that were in the water – and yes, those are rafts of bubbles (soap?) in the water.
Then I noticed one that had caught a fish. It maneuvered it toward the rocks on the side of the river near us and the fisherman. The bird struggled to control the fish and orient it so it could be swallowed. I never saw the swallow….and it looked like it would be a tight fit. The fish was probably a channel catfish…and it was bleeding from its fight with the cormorant.
I saw another cormorant with a fish. This time the bird had pierced the fish.
Back to the rocks on the far side of river, the cormorants open their wings in the sunshine like the black vultures. Sometimes there seems to be an interaction between birds with their wings open.
There was a heron that I first noticed near a rock at the end of the abutment.
It then flew to the rocky spit of the central island. That place has always been a favorite for herons, but it was altered by the floods. The rocks that extended further toward the dam must have been rolled away by the floods last year.
We’ll be visiting the dam again before the end of the year….hoping to see even more eagles (and maybe a bigger variety of gulls too).
