Close encounter with cormorant

11:00am Monday 29th October 2007

WHEN the air in the atmosphere gets cold it becomes denser and begins to fall. This in general is a good thing as this falling air does not allow water vapour to condense out of it, so clouds don't form and we usually experience sunny weather.

Recently we have had a few such moments when cold falling air has trapped warm moist air near the ground surface. In these conditions the water vapour trapped in the warm air is rapidly cooled by the colder falling air and this cooling, forces the water vapour trapped within the cooling warm air out, creating air filled with millions of water droplets near the ground, a condition we call fog.

On one foggy morning, I was carrying out an early morning check on the cattle on the marshland of Wilden. Wilden Lane is a few metres above the level of the marsh so I had to descend a few more metres to get onto the marshland itself. With every step down the fog got thicker and thicker.

Fortunately, basic navigation is not too difficult as the fence from the entrance leads straight to the river edge and the cattle have made a well trodden path that runs right along the banks of the Stour.

I was a little surprised when I stumbled upon the dividing fence at the end of the field. I had walked the length of the field and not seen a cow! I started back the way I had come and spotted the occasional shadow. I left the path to investigate only to find they were just fallen logs or pollarded willows.

More time passed and still there were no cattle and I was getting a little concerned when as fortune would have it I came across a fresh pat. I then heard a low soft moo typical of a mother cow checking up on its calf and decided I had to abandon the safety of the path and venture out into the thick blanket of the fog. I was soon rewarded by finding a cow and calf, which seemed quite unperturbed by this unusual weather. After 20 minutes of very unfocused walking I felt I had come across half the herd.

The riverside path was feeling like a distant memory and my hope of finding the other animals began to dwindle. I would have to change my plans and come back later in the day. With this decision made, I set off in the direction I felt the river was. It should have only been a minutes walk back but I ended up walking for much longer without finding it and I was now starting to get a little alarmed when another shadow loomed up through the mist.

As I approached this turned out to be yet another willow pollard and perched on an old gnarled branch that jutted from its twisted trunk sat a cormorant who regarded me with equal surprise. It sat there looking at me for a moment before talking to the air and vanishing into the mist.

This brief encounter had really lifted my spirits as while I have on several occasions witnessed cormorants perched along this and other river corridors in the district I must have been less that five feet away from this one and was afforded a rather privileged spectacle of witnessing this bird really close up.

EDITOR'S CHOICE