Cormorants

Cormorants just hanging out on a (buoyed up) pipe in one of the LVSD ponds this morning. These guys and/or dolls have it easy, compared to their Asian counterparts. From around 960 AD, fishermen in China and Japan have used trained cormorants to fish in rivers. To control the birds, the fishermen tie a snare near the base of the bird's throat. This prevents the birds from swallowing larger fish, which are held in their throat, but the birds can swallow smaller fish. When a cormorant has caught a fish in its throat, the fisherman brings the bird back to the boat and has the bird spit the fish up. Though cormorant fishing once was a successful industry, its primary use today is to serve the tourism industry.