Cormorant

Had a good walk along the Boulder Bank this afternoon. Managed to get about half way along and figured that it would probably take about 5 hours to do the walk all the way to the lighthouse and back. Given that it really isn't very easy walking on the uneven rocks that would mean a pretty long and very tiring 5 hours! That really will be a challenge for whenever I decide to do it!

Anyway, we stopped at a lone tree that, as I said, was about half way along. The tree had about 10 of these cormorants (shags?) in it. The very sad thing was that there was a dead bird hanging from high up in the tree. It was hung in fishing line and had clearly tangled the line around its neck then been unable to free itself so had ended up hanging itself. I found another dead bird down at ground level too. This one had come to grief with fishing line too - it had line coming out from its beak so it looked like it had maybe swallowed a fishing hook and choked itself to death.

What incredibly sad ends for these 2 poor birds.