Cormorant: Drying Off

I prefer large (generally): I always say "Better in large" or some such because they usually are! This one is definitely better in large.

Phalacrocorax carbo
I was going to refer to this as a cormorant, but actually it is a Great Cormorant! I went back to Wimbledon Park today to try to get a better shot of the Great Crested Grebe that I saw yesterday (at a distance): it turns out that there is a whole family of them (2 parents and 2, or possibly 3, juveniles), but they never came anywhere near the shore so my pictures were pretty uninteresting.

There were, however, several cormorants on the boating pond there and they are much less skittish than others that I've encountered so I managed to get much closer to them than ever before! They are amazing up close... Their plumage is so much more varied and beautiful than I thought: the feathers on their wings are a bronze colour with iridescent (dark) blue borders making them look like bronze scales, and the feathers on their back are all the iridescent blue colour. The blue iridescence just looks black from a distance (or when the light isn't right), and the glossy bronze parts just look brown so usually they just look brown and black. Fantastic: great cormorants indeed! This one was drying its wings after diving: when I crept too close they wouldn't fly away but would simply point their heads down and plop down into the water and under the surface (no jump or anything, they just tipped straight into a dive!). If I walked away they would get back out again quite quickly and resume drying their wings afresh!

I've uploaded a more close-up shot (of a different cormorant) to my blipfolio (here): it shows the bronze and blue of their plumage much better. It is standing at a funny angle because it was trying to decide whether I was too close or not: it dived very shortly after I took the photograph...