I'm not talking about anyone in particular, but it's hard not to notice
that it now seems politically correct, if not even fashionable, among
many birders to speak about double-crested cormorants as if they were
some kind of plague. More than maxima Canada geese, mute swans, house
sparrows, rock pigeons, European starlings, etc., cormorants are
reviled, and in a routine fashion that seems to expect universal agreement.
        Locally, these native birds have increased over the past forty years,
largely because of reductions in pollution that once ravaged them, and
perhaps because of the spread of non-native fish species in the Great
Lakes. There's increasing evidence they're only regaining lost ground.
Other native species--ring-billed gull is an example, or northern
cardinal--have greatly increased populations in Ohio, but you don't hear
birders complaining a lot about them.
        People say cormorants reduce populations of other colonial waterbirds,
such as herons and egrets, but recent numbers really don't show this,
and even if they did it would be evidence more likely of the very few
acres we allow colonial waterbirds to occupy for nesting.
Bill Whan
Columbus

"Thinking is what a great many people think they are doing when they are
merely rearranging their prejudices"--William James.


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