Beautiful plumage. In England all cormorants are property of the Crown, and it's a crime to creep up behind them with intent to frighten them, as the additional stress, over and above that caused by knowing you're a cormorant, releases hormones which spoil the taste of their flesh.
This law was enacted in 1342 as a result of the disastrous lamprey shortages of previous decades caused by the lamprey pogroms that followed the unfortunate death of Henry I. Cormorants replaced lampreys as the dish of choice on royal tables. Curiously the text of this law states that you must not 'ycreepit unto them neither upon ye land nor yet 'neath Poseidon's murky realm', which suggests that the medieval cormoranters were fully aware of these sublime creatures' aural distinction. As the pogrommers turned their attention to more traditional and easier targets the lamprey population grew, and cormorant over-easy fell out of favour. Instead of eating them, the bored English nobility took to baiting them, by forcing them to wrestle with swans in disused real tennis courts. Fearing revolution, for the peasantry saw this as a waste of two good sources of both food and fertiliser, the aristocracy kept this so-called sport secret, and even today it's said that Prince Harry is a great devotee. His favourite fighting cormorant is called Pippa, reputedly, because in the Prince's own words "It's the best shag I've ever had, ya". > On 12 May 2017, at 23:24, Brian Walters <[email protected]> wrote: > > http://www.australiangeographic.com.au/news/2017/05/study-finds-great-cormorants-can-hear-underwater-as-well-as-whales > > > Cheers > > Brian > -- PDML Pentax-Discuss Mail List [email protected] http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net to UNSUBSCRIBE from the PDML, please visit the link directly above and follow the directions.
