The Cormorant Steals the Show

Recently, I've been making a habit of walking along a particular stretch of Alameda Creek near my home almost every single morning. This serves several purposes: 1) With shelter-in-place restrictions, it is a convenient and and accessible spot to exercise, 2) the wildlife, especially bird watching, has been very good, and 3) I've found that the consistent schedule has helped me as a photographer.

Often, in the past couple of months, while I haven't gone out thinking, now I need to get this shot, I have been keeping my eye out for young birds (see the last blog post, for example). Instead, I have been trying to be alert to the environment and different moods of a particular landscape.

Today, was an interesting day, as it started quite sunny and calm, which was quite different from the previous day, which was clouds, misty, and breezy. Also, as the season has worn on, I'm noticing that I'm seeing fewer young birds, which is to be expected. I was walking along the creek when I spotted a cormorant spreading its wings (mantling):

This isn't that unusual when the sun is out; the cormorants are often out here in the morning fishing and they will find a log or rock afterwards to clean and dry their feathers. I did like the way this one was nicely back-lit by the morning sun, however.

I also noticed another cormorant in the water:

Often, you'll find them coming up briefly, then diving down again within a few seconds. This one, however, didn't appear to be in a diving mood. The advantage of watching an animal a lot is that you often can predict (or guess) what they might do next. To me, this one looked like it might be getting ready to take off., by the way it was moving its feet. Sure enough, that was what it was getting ready to do:

Fortunately, I was prepared, and got to watch how a cormorant gets airborne from a dead start in the water. As shown above, the wings come up out of the water and the tail comes up, as well. Next, the feet start working ans the wings spread out...

Those first couple of steps produce a lot of spray. The next step is to beta the wings and continue to use a hopping motion with the legs. The tail feathers are kept down.

The wings continue to flap and the tail flicks upward...

The wings beat more vigorously to generate lift, at one point the wingtips slap the water.

At this point, the legs are skipping along the water...

With one last kick with the feet, and spread of the wings, the cormorant is now airborne.

However, the wing beats still manage to slap the water at the wing tips...

Until, finally, the cormorant is truly airborne. It was an amazing sight to witness and record, made even more remarkable due to the calmness of the water surface.