Cormorants on the rivers

[John Aston]

Indeed - it's a slippery slope though. It's hard to complain too much about cormorants if we also complain about zander culls . Stuff changes - look how many egrets we have now, but how few curlews . I'd never seen a kite or buzzard in England before the late 70s , but did see lots of water voles. Deer are ubiquitous now , but I only saw my first English deer when I was 30.

I do think cormorants are a problem in some places but we have much bigger problems on river quality . At last more people know and care about river quality because who doesn't love to hate panto villain fatcat water companies pumping s*** into the rivers? But an equally important issue is agricultural pollution - but the fickle public all love famers and hate red tape thanks to Tory dinosaur Clarkson's TV show .

 

[flightliner]

Eeinteresting link from British Trust For ornithology unlike otters which have been here for yonks cormorants only came inland circa 1980 a recent addition of a top predator is bound to make a difference e.g. have Magpies had an effect on sparrows

Spot on Benny, i saw my first Comorant in 1980 while pike fishing on the south forty drain near Boston.

 

[@Clive]

J.W. Martin, 1885

 

[bennygesserit]

Clive do you think Cormorants havent had an effect ? or Were you saying Anglers always have an excuse ?

The ornithology organisation , unsurprisingly , said they didnt think culling would work and displacement works better i.e. frighten them away with starting pistols , maybe that works but I doubt anyone is going to frighten them all the way back to the sea.

Why did they come inland anyway ? Shortage of prey on the coast ? is all this an indication of overfishing and pollution in the sea ?

As for Culling I dont shoot but I imagine getting birds in a public area without endangering others might be tricky

 

[@Clive]

Clive do you think Cormorants havent had an effect ? or Were you saying Anglers always have an excuse ?

The ornithology organisation , unsurprisingly , said they didnt think culling would work and displacement works better i.e. frighten them away with starting pistols , maybe that works but I doubt anyone is going to frighten them all the way back to the sea.

Why did they come inland anyway ? Shortage of prey on the coast ? is all this an indication of overfishing and pollution in the sea ?

As for Culling I dont shoot but I imagine getting birds in a public area without endangering others might be tricky

Of course cormorants have an effect. But the truth is that none of us know how much and whether it is positive or negative. The fact that mobile predators like cormorants choose to return daily to any water implies that there are fish to eat.Their increasing numbers could be seen as an indicator to high stock densities. As far as the lake near here where large numbers spend the winter months goes; I caught a lot more and bigger roach 10 years ago than I do now. However, last month the Department of Fisheries stocked it with around 60 to 80 pike and a couple of thousand tiny roach. So who knows what is going on?

Regards the comments made by J. W. Martin who wrote under the pen name of The Trent Otter; His comments echo comments made in today's times and those made by the first English writer William Samuel in 1577. Fishing was always better yesterday.

 

[nottskev]

Of course cormorants have an effect. But the truth is that none of us know how much and whether it is positive or negative. The fact that mobile predators like cormorants choose to return daily to any water implies that there are fish to eat.Their increasing numbers could be seen as an indicator to high stock densities. As far as the lake near here where large numbers spend the winter months goes; I caught a lot more and bigger roach 10 years ago than I do now. However, last month the Department of Fisheries stocked it with around 60 to 80 pike and a couple of thousand tiny roach. So who knows what is going on?

Regards the comments made by J. W. Martin who wrote under the pen name of The Trent Otter; His comments echo comments made in today's times and those made by the first English writer William Samuel in 1577. Fishing was always better yesterday.

I'm just adding stuff rather than setting out to contradict you, Clive, but if you ask anyone who enjoyed fishing Trent Valley gravel pits eg members of Derby Railway, Pride of Derby, Notts Fed and lots of others, they are likely to tell you - with pics to prove it - it WAS, notwithstanding nostalgia, better yesterday.

As for weighing negative and positive, in the 90's I joined a small club that had nurtured into a lovely, well-managed mixed fishery a lake a short flight from the Dee estuary. When the cormorants increased and found it, the fishing soon collapsed and subsequent investigations - nettings, electro-fishing - showed it had been all but emptied of fish. We saw no positive side to that.

Maybe someone has an illuminating comment on this point. I often read, from people claiming a broader perspective on predators and prey, that there can't be too many predators, as "laws of nature" ensure that there can only be as many predators as the supply of prey will support, hence a natural balance will arise. Ok. But how does this apply in cases such as the one I just outlined, where flocks of travelling predators scour a wide area for feeding grounds, plunder a particular source until it's exhausted and then move on to another? It may be that in some global sense (perhaps over a region, or maybe the UK?) some balance may obtain, but that's of little interest to anglers who lose their waters in their locales. No "balance", such as you may find with native fish eating birds like grebes or herons, or predatory fish like pike, come to that, applied; the alien predators simply wiped the fishery out and then f'ed off elsewhere.

 

[@Clive]

I'm just adding stuff rather than setting out to contradict you, Clive, but if you ask anyone who enjoyed fishing Trent Valley gravel pits eg members of Derby Railway, Pride of Derby, Notts Fed and lots of others, they are likely to tell you - with pics to prove it - it WAS, notwithstanding nostalgia, better yesterday.

As for weighing negative and positive, in the 90's I joined a small club that had nurtured into a lovely, well-managed mixed fishery a lake a short flight from the Dee estuary. When the cormorants increased and found it, the fishing soon collapsed and subsequent investigations - nettings, electro-fishing - showed it had been all but emptied of fish. We saw no positive side to that.

Maybe someone has an illuminating comment on this point. I often read, from people claiming a broader perspective on predators and prey, that there can't be too many predators, as "laws of nature" ensure that there can only be as many predators as the supply of prey will support, hence a natural balance will arise. Ok. But how does this apply in cases such as the one I just outlined, where flocks of travelling predators scour a wide area for feeding grounds, plunder a particular source until it's exhausted and then move on to another? It may be that in some global sense (perhaps over a region, or maybe the UK?) some balance may obtain, but that's of little interest to anglers who lose their waters in their locales. No "balance", such as you may find with native fish eating birds like grebes or herons, or predatory fish like pike, come to that, applied; the alien predators simply wiped the fishery out and then f'ed off elsewhere.

Yes, I agree with most of that. Up to the last twenty years however fisheries could be balanced naturally as most of the major sources of predation were resident species. The exception to that, more so on the Continent, but not exclusively, was the habit of anglers taking fish for the pot. Then we have to factor in the newly introduced predators; signal crayfish, zander and wels catfish.

On the subject of introduced species; in Spain the local species of the Ebro are being decimated by competition from north European species dumped into the Ebro by catfish anglers from Britain, Germany & Holland. They release the livebaits they have brought and haven't used into the river before they leave. And in Belgium, north-east France and neighbouring areas of Germany coarse anglers have given up fishing because of the infestation of gobies. Millions of small fish make bait fishing a lost cause. It is similar, but to a lesser extent in western France where a South American catfish ruins angler's sport.

During the last twenty years however there has been an enormous increase in cormorants and goosanders. Why I don't know. Could it be linked to dwindling inshore sea species? Whatever the reason it must have some effect on fisheries. And as you say, these flocks can wipe out a fishery knowing that there are other nearby fisheries to plunder. They don't starve themselves to death.

There are exceptions to the "Should have been here yesterday" claim in the Yorkshire rivers that were devoid of fish up to the 1980's, maybe longer in some places. The Dearne, Don, Calder, Holme, Rother and others are far better than they were when I was a lad. Perversely the river that I used to travel an hour to on a moped, the Wharfe, is now victim to problems caused by abstraction, not predation.

As for lakes; I believe that more lakes have been ruined by modern mis-management than natural causes. And the carp is behind much of it.

It is a complicated situation.

 

[John Aston]

I had a fascinating chat a couple of years ago with an expert on cormorants from the Angling Trust . The popular belief that we have lots of the birds because the seas are depleted (which I once held) is not really correct. Some do come in from the sea , especially in coastal areas , but most are inland cormorants from Europe , principally France and the Low Countries which migrate west to the UK in winter.

I keep a log of cormorant sightings for one club which has 12miles of river on the N York Moors and very few birds , if any , are reported in spring and summer , but despite fewer anglers being out for grayling than trout , the numbers spike very noticeably in December and January. BTW , it isn't the case that more anglers keep the birds away on our river - we have a beat system meaning that there'll only be one angler per beat (typically 0.5 - 1ml long).

And why have they started to do this ? Search me ,even Brexit didn't stop them .... But I guess it is because things change. In the UK collared doves were unknown here before the Fifties and as I said in another post , egrets are also new arrivals .

 

[nottskev]

I mentioned earlier in the thread a notion that seems increasingly quaint these days - the laws of nature. What laws? It all looks more like a free for all in our post-modern times, with climate change, environmental pollution of n kinds, abstracted rivers, invasive alien species and so on. Yes, there are good news stories, if you're lucky, but the general drift ..... ? Identifying the impact of any one element isolated from the mix is tough. But I do feel that we've been slow to adapt our legislation re the protection of cormorants relative to the protection of fish and fisheries.

Here's a thought. Would cormorants be operating in such safe impunity if, instead of eating our fish, they foraged for food by digging up the greens on the golf courses frequented by those who hold power and influence? Or if they feasted not on fish but game birds? Am I alone in thinking the case for a cull would have been swiftly recognised and action taken?

 

[@Clive]

When we moved to France in early 2012 the first winters fitted the historic type of having two or three weeks of bright blue skies and bitterly cold temperatures in Jan and / or Feb. Spring started in March, it was hot from May to Sept and it remained dry through to October when the 'Second Spring' brought rain that refreshed the arid landscape. Other than summer thunderstorms rain was rare outside Oct to Dec and in early spring.

Wood pigeons were scarce. The first two weeks of February 2012, just as I arrived, never got above -8C and that was in full sunshine. It was -25C overnight for a fortnight. I rarely saw a pigeon for the first 6 or 7 years and there were no egrets anywhere outside the marshlands of the Marais Poitevin. The first time I saw pigeons in any numbers was around 2018 when for some reason huge flocks arrived. Now everybody has them. I only realised why they were absent for so long when I read Fred J Taylor's book. The same thing happened in England after the big freeze of the 1960's.

My working patch at its peak was over 3,000 square km so I had plenty of oppertunities to observe the changes. Now egrets are here all year. It started out with a handful of cattle egrets over wintering in fields near to the River Vienne. Now there is a resident population swelled by many more in winter. They can be seen near small ponds, large lakes and rivers as well as in fields. In the meantime we now have much wetter weather without the traditional long summer heat and short cold spell. This year the lakes used for abstraction never dropped below 80%. Typicallly they dropped to around 20% or less through the late summer. The cormorants built up in numbers along the Vienne valley and their numbers have drastically increased in the large lakes where I fish. Species of birds that should be migratory are here all year. Harriers, honey buzzards, hobbies can be seen in winter these days. The cranes that used to migrate in massive flocks as regular as clockwork in 2 weeks, twice a year, now pass by in smaller numbers over much longer periods. There were some heading south on 30th December and the northward migration has sometimes in recent years started in mid January.

They used to shoot the cormarants when we first arrived. The department of fisheries organised weekly shooting parties on Saturday evenings. Now nobody controls the numbers. When you can see 50 or 60 birds working together every day for 10 or 12 weeks in a lake measuring about 30 acres it has to have some effect and probably a negative one.

 

[John Aston]

I mentioned earlier in the thread a notion that seems increasingly quaint these days - the laws of nature. What laws? It all looks more like a free for all in our post-modern times, with climate change, environmental pollution of n kinds, abstracted rivers, invasive alien species and so on. Yes, there are good news stories, if you're lucky, but the general drift ..... ? Identifying the impact of any one element isolated from the mix is tough. But I do feel that we've been slow to adapt our legislation re the protection of cormorants relative to the protection of fish and fisheries.

Here's a thought. Would cormorants be operating in such safe impunity if, instead of eating our fish, they foraged for food by digging up the greens on the golf courses frequented by those who hold power and influence? Or if they feasted not on fish but game birds? Am I alone in thinking the case for a cull would have been swiftly recognised and action taken?

You are right but , to return to a favourite theme , anglers are their own worst enemy . They moan for England but are hopeless at getting their voice heard. BASC (shooting ) has enough firepower(sorry) to lobby at a high level and to get its voice heard. Most shotgun shells are still lead and yet BASC are still fannying about and finding excuses not to use non toxic shot - 30 years after anglers were banned from using lead shot . Friends in high places and - count 'em - 150,000 members ( TEN times more than ACA had or AT has) . And we wonder why birds get such protection - 1.2 MILLION RSPB members have some clout .

I am currently engaged in a long running complaint with C &RT (a charity with 1600 staff ) , whose dredging destroyed a hugely important spawning area of the Yorkshire Ouse in June 2024 . Are English Nature interested in such extensive damage to underwater wildlife at peak spawning time ? Nah , not remotely . But I guarantee that if one bloody bat had been disturbed there'd have been injunctions flying around.The only help I have had on this has been from AT . EA ? Your'e joking . Usual stance is - 'Yeah , it's awful but (shrugs ) what can you do ,eh ? '

 

[nottskev]

There can't be many more depressing ways to start the new year than by reading these two doc's

The case

https://anglingtrust.net/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/The_AT_Cormorant_Impact_Report__Final_.pdf

The response

Government rejects plea to add cormorants to the General Licence

Once again, government ministers have failed to approve proposals that would help control cormorant numbers in the UK and give fish stocks some protection from the unsustainable levels of predation caused by these birds, whose numbers have skyrocketed over the last 30 years. Representations from...

anglingtrust.net

 

[Pete Shears]

I always see cormorants when visiting the coast, no shortage there.

 

[bennygesserit]

Of course cormorants have an effect. But the truth is that none of us know how much and whether it is positive or negative. The fact that mobile predators like cormorants choose to return daily to any water implies that there are fish to eat.Their increasing numbers could be seen as an indicator to high stock densities. As far as the lake near here where large numbers spend the winter months goes; I caught a lot more and bigger roach 10 years ago than I do now. However, last month the Department of Fisheries stocked it with around 60 to 80 pike and a couple of thousand tiny roach. So who knows what is going on?

Regards the comments made by J. W. Martin who wrote under the pen name of The Trent Otter; His comments echo comments made in today's times and those made by the first English writer William Samuel in 1577. Fishing was always better yesterday.

My opinion is that animals such as otters that have been around for a long time will establish a balance , in the otters case because they bare territorial (or were before the introduction of commercial fisheries) , in fact one of the biggest killers of otters (besides cars) is other otters.

However there are numerous examples where nature becomes imbalanced , rabbits in australia for instance , caine toads , the thing is for a preadator prey relationship they may take a few hundred years before they die out or establish balance and in the meantime their numbers will fluctuate according to that predator prey relationship that I can never remember the name of , and also , as you rightly say its complex and there are other factors involved here , anglers , pollution , cray fish , carp etc

My guess would be that cormorants can have a devastating but localised effect until they move on , also after they have moved on they may leave behind a fish population that takes years to recover