‘The big scary bird’: Wild bird harasses mallard, her ducklings at Charlotte lake
When Tina Quizon saw an unfamiliar bird try to harass and intimidate a mallard duck and her ducklings at Park Road Lake on Thursday, she immediately began snapping photos.
Quizon, a wildlife photographer, later identified the “the big scary bird” as the fish-eating, double-crested cormorant.
“I’ve been up here in Charlotte since about 2016, and I’ve never seen one of those,” she told the Observer on Friday.
Quizon said she remembered seeing a different cormorant with red eyes a couple weeks ago, but in New Orleans while at a golf tournament.
“I (had) just seen him down in New Orleans, and now he’s here in Charlotte, but he’s got blue eyes,” she said.
Cormorants in Charlotte
Cormorants are common in Charlotte, according to Sampson Parker Jr., a North Carolina Wildlife Resources Commission officer in Mecklenburg County.
The migratory bird tends to hang around North Carolina’s lakes to hunt for fish, he said.
The double-crested cormorant began showing up regularly in the Charlotte area in 1983, according to the Carolina Bird Club.
“Anywhere you got lakes or big ponds, you’re going to have cormorants,” Parker Jr. said.
Parker Jr. said cormorants usually aren’t aggressive, but Quizon doesn’t remember the one she saw Thursday being docile.
“He for some reason did not want those baby ducks near him,” she said. “If an adult duck went past him, he was fine. When mommy and the babies came by him, it just set him off.”
In one of Quizon’s photos, the cormorant is opening its wings, which environmental activist Carroll Cox said is an intimidation tactic.
An ‘overly-abundant pest species’
The cormorant is protected under the Migratory Bird Treaty Act, which prohibits the killing, capturing, selling, trading or transporting of protected migratory bird species without prior authorization by the Department of Interior U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, Cox said.
The birds are usually found in coastal areas, but they have migrated inland and have been known for being a nuisance to fish farms, Cox said. They’re such a nuisance, fish farmers who want to contain the bird can do so by obtaining a depredation permit from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to shoot and dispose of them.
In 2014, South Carolina harvested almost 12,000 cormorants using the permits, the Carolina Bird Club said. In 2016, a court order put a stop to cormorant hunting in South Carolina until the bird’s impact on the state is researched and better documented.
Conversations on whether the cormorant is an “overly-abundant pest species” are ongoing, but their “explosive” population growth continues to be seen throughout the Carolinas, the Carolina Bird Club said.
This story was originally published May 21, 2021 at 4:43 PM.
