Main Photo: Cormorant drying out its wings © Dave Nurney
The rare blue sky of a raw winter’s morning reveals them.
I count the evidence of over a dozen. And more are appearing all the time in every direction.
Long and slim, they crisscross the atmosphere displaying a variety of colours – white, yellow, black and grey. And then they softly dissolve into space as if by magic, only to be replaced by more.
Such is the evidence of the migration of thousands of temporary visitors over Cranleigh. On this freezing day they are for once no longer obscured by clouds: vapour trails.
They betray their creators’ presence even though the highest ones may be invisible to us on their journeys to and from far flung lands.
Lower aircraft, from nearby Heathrow and Gatwick, are easier to spot but most of us under the flight lines hear their screaming from a long way off, whether we see them or not.
I glance upwards again with my ‘bins’ and high in the heavenly canvas there is a different kind of movement. Fourteen dark dots pepper the aquamarine and are moving steadily in a line from west to east. Balloons?
No, they are not of human origin this time. As the specks move nearer I’m soon confident they are birds, and big ones. But they are flying at such an altitude that they are only visible through magnification.
Gradually they grow larger and I suspect they are geese. My hopes rise. Could they be Surrey rarities in the shape of Pink-footed Geese who have ‘overshot’ on their southerly journey from Iceland to Norfolk?
Now the leader has veered off to the right and is circling around, as if lost. The others follow. Perhaps they really could be ‘PfGs’ searching for East Anglia…
But as they rise higher and resume their course over where I stand I am soon muttering: ‘Oh bother, Cormorants!’ Birding can give you a lot of disappointments along with the excitement.
Cormorants are now no strangers to this village and can be seen daily at this time of the year flying over the high street at three to four times the height of a mature oak tree as they move between roosting sites. Often, though, they are just distant specks and, like aeroplanes, can go unobserved as they pass over Surrey on longer journeys.
Like the jetting air traffic, they were also once rare inland but are now part of our daily environment and a regular ‘fly-over.’
These one-time purely seabirds enjoy warmer times with us particularly from September to April, unless water freezes, but they can be found in every month of the year.
The first record I’m aware of in Cranleigh was back in 1954 but it took another 16 years for some keen birdwatchers in the village to see any.
Within a few years a roost here was only the second one in Surrey and I eventually came across a record 72. Good job I checked some apparent virus-hit trees – now long gone – that had been turned a ghostly white.
The rise in numbers follows a similar pattern to Sussex, where coastal breeding resumed from 1985 after a 50-year gap.
Sussex birds are known to come from a wide area, including Scotland, northern England, Ireland, Wales and Holland. So it seems probable that Cranleigh’s birds arrive from many directions too.
When viewed close up the aerodynamic Cormorant looks primeval. Designed for one purpose, fishing, its Latin name Phalacrocorax carbo stems from Corvus marinus (sea Raven), which points to it being a nasty piece of work.
With a long, hooked bill, powerful webbed feet for underwater propulsion, and rudder-like wedge shaped tail, this feathered machine tries its luck in Cranleigh Waters, fisheries, and even small ponds.
There it surveys its hunting grounds with its head underwater. A quick dive can last for up to several minutes and in some habitats it is capable of dropping down to a depth of 150 feet.
The Cormorant may resurface many metres away and if it has been successful it will demonstrate only too well why it is regarded as such a pest by gamekeepers, bailiffs and fisherman. It shows off its catch before perhaps shaking it, throwing it up in the air and gulping it down whole.
Sometimes I wonder how it can ever take off again. I’ve seen it devour large pike, one of the most ferocious freshwater fish, while others have watched it swallow a writhing eel nearly as long as itself. Maybe the sliminess helped get the thing down.
