daily sumi-e Cormorant

I remember seeing a strange movie a long time ago about a man in Wales (Ralph Fiennes) driven crazy by a cormorant he was in charge of caring for. I learned how fishermen in China and Japan use the birds to catch fish. Fishermen tie a rope on the bird’s throat and the cormorant dives off the side of the fishing boat, swim under the water and do what is natural for it, he catches fish. However, the rope prevents the bird from swallowing its catch. With a fish in its throat, whether the fisherman brings the bird back to the boat by the rope or the bird is trained to return on its own, I am not sure, the fisherman has the bird spit up the fish. I am not sure ethically how I feel about this practice, but I find cormorants a very magical bird. On my annual trip to Assateague Island, I saw cormorants in the wild for the first time.

September 3, 2010 | Categories: poem | Tags: art, haiga, haiku, home, inspiration, life, literature, nature, nature photo, nature photography, photo, photography, poem, poems, short poem, short poetry, sumi-e, wildlife, writing | Leave a comment