Cormorants

My springtime migratory route has taken me along the river for the last couple of weeks. It's a longer route and a better workout than riding straight through the middle of the city, and the first time I rode it I thought "what's that noise?" and realized it was my breath... when you're stopping for red lights you don't get such an aerobic workout.

In another month or so I think the night herons will return to the spot where you could always find them in years past. Right now the cormorants are occupying that territory.

When I first came here I couldn't figure out what these weird birds were. They don't really float above the water... they float on the same level with the water, kind of, and Wikipedia just told me that their feathers are not waterproof so maybe that's why. The other weird thing is you can be looking at this oily-looking, low-riding bird in the water and the next minute it's not there. They dive for fish, and they stay under a long time and come up somewhere else. I was fascinated with this when I first got to Boston. I had only heard of cormorants because of a book I read as a kid, about an Eskimo girl who got left behind on her own and survived by eating cormorants among other things. While they're above water, cormorants gaze upwards into the middle distance like aloof movie stars. After they dive, they hold open their wings to dry them... makes them look a little ominous, like vultures, but they're still gazing into the middle distance, as if nothing above the water can possibly interest them.

Cormorants don't surprise me anymore, but it surprises me that they're just part of the landscape. They are strange birds.

Can't wait til the night herons come back.

p.s. that yellow floaty is a boom to keep runoff from the road confined. No one who ever rides next to a big road could ever thing there is any such thing as a clean car or a green car. Cars shed black grime and grease, and it pollutes the river. It's easy to think if you've got a nice shiny car in a suburban garage that that shit don't stink, but it does.