Magellanic Cormorants are sea birds living in the frigid waters of the southern ocean and are found from southern Chile down through the Beagle Channel to Tierra del Fuego and Ushuaia Argentina.
I was thrilled to find a colony of nesting birds and settled in for some telephoto shooting.
I don’t believe in disturbing nesting birds, and always watch them from a non-intrusive distance.
And then this happened! These curious humans arrived by boat, got way too close, took photos with their cell phones, and panicked the birds.
All the parents understandably flew off in terror as soon as the humans got so close, exposing incubating eggs and unfledged chicks to the elements.
You can see one very brave parent remained, until even this last hold-out, got frightened by the persistent humans and flew away.
The fledglings scrambled together terrified,
as I watched all this, completely appalled.
I am however, very pleased to report a happy ending to this sad tale. The humans eventually left, the frightened parents cautiously returned, and the colony resumed peaceful functioning. You can see the mother’s settling back on their nests. The chicks were very lucky that hungry giant petrels, skuas or gulls didn’t find them in such a vulnerable state.
So thankfully, it’s cheers to you, from the very frightened birdies (and photographer)~
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We humans have a tendency to disturb nature. We are like elephants in a china store. Great pictures.
Exactly! Living in harmony is not our strong suit.
🙁
Great pictures, Cindy!
Thank & very pleased you enjoyed!
Wow! I’am completely amazed. The report is absolutely wonderful,
Congratulations, Sue.
I’m sorry, Cindy,
Thanks so much Isabel & have a wonderful day my friend~
These are really great, and I love the one of the hen sitting on the eggs! 😃
Mama birds are such loving and wonderful mothers!
They really are. Nature at its finest. 😊😊
Superb as ever. I like the penultimate one best
Thank you so much. I do like saving the best for last!
🙂
It’s great; Cindy!
These are awesome photos, thank you for sharing, Cindy. 🙂
Thank you more for appreciating them & cheers Ranu <3
Your pictures are excellent. What a shame about the fools who went so close as to frighten the birds at such an important time.
Thank you Thomas & be well my friend~
Your photos are always proof enough, Cindy, that it’s a great privilege to live on this planet!
Awwww, so kind and so appreciated too!
Those poor birds! The stupid humans should know better. thanks for sharing your amazing photos. I’m glad all turned out well in the end.
If it had turned out differently it would have been so distressing. Birds are such devoted parents.
I wonder how a human would feel if a bird got up close and personal while they cared for their child. No common sense. So glad this had a happy ending ❤️
Most people don’t think of other beings they share the planet with in those terms it seems Dorinda. I hope more will – do unto others as you would have them do unto you.
Exactly! Thank you!
Beautifully stated Dorinda. Thank you!
Thank you, for being kind and understanding to the animals. <3
I wouldn’t have thought any bird would nest so close to humans. Very interesting photos.
Well the birds didn’t intentionally do that. This was a vacant pier piling in the middle of a bay. These people pulled up in their boat.
Unfortunately, human beings, somehow seem to have lost common sense!! Thank you very much for this instructive post.:) Very best regards Martina
I agree Martina and thank you!
I am also appalled by the lack of sensitivity people displayed while being so close to the nesting area. Great story and post!
I see this sort of thing too often. The worst was an entire family petting wild buffalo in Yellowstone for a selfie.
Amazing birds! Lovely pictures. The last pictures portrays the peace on their faces!
Honestly, if I hadn’t seen the parents return, I would have remained quite upset.
I am so happy for the happy ending to what I know were anxious moments for you as you watched at what was happening. This reminds me of a scripture in Psalm 84:3 that says, “Even the sparrow has found a home and the swallow a nest for herself, where she may have her young…” What an illustration of the love and wonders God gives us in his created beings. 🙂
What a beautiful passage! Thank you so much for sharing it with me and blessing to you my friend <3
Your welcome, and thank you. Be blessed also, my friend. 🙂 I always love seeing your nature and animal photos because it is always a reminder of why we are so blessed and inriched in our lives to have such beautiful creatures to enjoy and care for on this earth.
ignorance of men. glad the adults came back.,
You and me both! <3
So glad there was a happy outcome. Some people just don’t think. Wonderful photos.
I think sometimes there is an underestimation of the feelings of animals.
I totally agree.
Ecotourism at its best and worst.
So well put! <3
Agree!
Almost a tragedy. Well captured Cindy 💛
Thank you Val & cheers to you my friend <3
Great pictures. We don’t always use the brains we’ve been given. I love how shiny the feathers are!
It is wonderful to observe nesting birds, from a distance!
I was happy to read the happy ending of this story. Your photos are just amazing!
You are very kind & most appreciated too!
Very neat photos. I hope the mama bird at least, came back quickly as the boat went away. Nice to have such clear and close photographs though.
I was particularly concerned about the unfledged chicks.
Yah I would be too, awe.
🐣🐣🐣
Sometimes we don’t realize the unintended consequences of our actions. I’m glad that all returned to normal.
Leslie
Exactly. Thank you Leslie.
🙂
Cindy did you notice your were tagged for a fun project? I don’t have URL with me but it is in post, Behind the Illness in 4’s. No pick 11 people, just four. I hope you enjoy. I’m excited to learn more about you. I also have a project to discuss in another email about my new Blog site, fortheloveofart.blog. I hope you have a short time to participate.
M
Thanks for the heads up. I will check it out later today.
I hope you play along, it’s good clean fun and very short to do. 🙂
Awesome pictures, Cindy. I have never understood why humans can’t leave nesting animals alone! Thanks for sharing!
It is so important. Bird parents put such intense efforts into raising their young.
That is so true Cindy.
🐣🐣🐣
Interesting post and great pictures 🙂
Thank you and very pleased you enjoyed~
Wonderful photos. How can people be so insensitive!
I often wonder exactly this.
Fabulous pictures, Cindy. What are they nesting on?
It was some sort of free standing pier platform in the bay that probably very rarely gets used. I am guessing it only gets used during three months or so a year during the southern summer and even then, rarely.
I’ve had a special fondness for cormorants ever since I read Scott O’Dell’s book, Island of the Blue Dolphins, to my class many years ago. The woman in that book was stranded on the island for many years and made herself a skirt of cormorant feathers. Apparently that skirt is still kept in a museum at the Santa Barbara Mission in California. The story is fiction but it is based on a real woman who was rescued from the Channel Islands and is now buried at the Mission. I haven’t gone to see if the cormorant feather skirt is really there, but it added a nice touch to the story.
Your photos are beautiful. Love this post.
I know that book so well, having read and re-read it so many times as a kid. I was enraptured by the book, by the illustrations and the whole amazing concept as living alone ib a island in my own hand built enclosure with my feral dog Rantu, my feral bird, keeping an eye out for the Aluets and I remember very well what the cormorant skirt looked like in the sketch. I met the author years later as an adult briefly at a party in the town where I was born and grew up. Synchronistic that you should mention this book!
I would LOVE to have met him. Too late now as I see that he has passed away. So cool that we both have a love for this book and the concepts in it.
Synchronisticity!
I love your photos and your message to give wild animals and birds their space.
Amen & thank you!
Really cool pics and story Cindy. Thanks for sharing. Gary
Very pleased you enjoyed & cheers to you my friend~
Cindy. you just can’t fix Stupid! Stuff like this makes me angry. I’m glad the birds and babies are okay now, and I hope they’ll be safe from here on out!
It was so frustrating to watch this and be able to do nothing. It reminded me a little bit of the of the feelings engendered by Hitchcock’s film, ‘Rear Window.’
Fantastic photos and a story with both a happy ending and a lesson. BTW, what are the nests made of?
Everything the birds can scavenge including plastic and some latex gloves!
Very interesting! The nests are so white.
Their droppings form a shield of white dry hardened material almost like clay that hold the nest together.
Fascinating, yet makes perfect sense. Not something we would see here in New England. Thank you, Cindy. 🙂
Thank you more for such kind comments.
My pleasure!
🐦
Greats shots Cindy
Glad you enjoyed & thank you Eunice <3
WHEW!!!! What the he** is wrong with humans? So many have no regard for life. Selfish little b&%#ar^s! No wonder we need zoo habitats and the such! Sigh! Uch!!
Oh, and how about the new “Likes” scroll. Just another not broken thing WordPress fixed! Poo!
I haven’t heard about the changes to the likes. It’s probably better I don’t find out!! And yes, I wish people would be more sensitive and considerate around wild creatures.
It may have been a 2 day glitch on WP. It was the weirdest to see all the heads scrolling by!
Ah, humans… most are so unconscious, alas.
A fine photographic tale, Cindy. Glad it ended well.
It would have been terrible, if it ended differently, and it so easily could have, with all the predators around and considering the weather.
They shouldn’t have gone too close and just observed from a safe distance. Great pictures but it’s sad those men disturbed the nesting birds 😕
Yes. Thank you for caring.
Really cool indeed!
Bird parents are so impressive and so dedicated. Humans could learn………
🙂
You capture so many interesting and gorgeous things! Wow that is so crazy! So glad they came back
I just found your comment in my spam filter! Thank you Lyn & cheers to you my friend~
xx
OMG! They are so photogenic. Lovely pictures, Cindy… 🙂
Ahhh, thank you and happy you enjoyed the 🐤🐤
Ignorant humans just…..don’t……think (that their actions are counterproductive to the existence of the local birdlife). Thank goodness there are some of us nature lovers and environmentalists around to counter their thoughtless actions.
Good to hear the humans left relatively quickly and the Cormorants were left in peace.
Yes, I was especially alarmed for the incubating eggs and featherless chicks due to the cold weather. There was a period after the boat left and I was watching and the giant petrels were in the sky and this was also a worry. Human beings cause such ripple effects by our actions…..
This seems to me sometimes our curiosity could cause harm to others even in the act of just observed too closely as this case. You are very thoughtful!
So are you my friend and I appreciate you very much for this! 🐤🐤
So disappointed in humans ONCE AGAIN! I guess when you believe you are the only thing that’s important you don’t have to take others into consideration. Your pictures are amazing and so very beautiful. I’m so relieved that the ending was a happy one.
I will confess to freaking out while it was going down. I had been watching them for awhile and was so impressed with the couple sharing of responsibilities and the general dedication of bird parents, mama rolling her eggs, papa inspecting when he flew in. All so very bird like, and then this happened. And I had to sit there and watch while they tramped up the ladder with the parents were gone. It was like a scary movie. I had to wait and see the parents come back before I could relax.
Superb documentary photography on MC & Chicks, my friend! ⊹⋛♡(•ө•)⋋(◐⊝◑)⋌(•ө•)♡⋚⊹
🐤🐤⊹⋛♡(•ө•)⋋(◐⊝◑)⋌(•ө•)♡⋚⊹⊹⋛♡🐦🐦
What is wrong with people? Glad the adults returned to the best. Those waters are the deepest blue.
Pristine clean arctic ocean, so different to the more polluted California ocean I am used to.
People can be so inconsiderate. I’m glad things turned out okay. 🙂
Yes, we can be, and we often don’t realize it.
Their experience was so important, took out their cell phones, snapped away and left them open to harm. Ugh. No common sense.
Yes, thank you for knowing. I was super upset by this. But I don’t want this to be anything about how these people were bad. They appreciated the baby birds. We humans can all so easily be bad, when we don’t reflect on, or know what we are doing. This is something that affects all of us everyday, in all our interactions, and often we don’t know it.
True Cindy.
Some people are thoughtless … And even the southern oceans are already polluted by plastic and the birds use it for nest building. But, of cause, not as bad as in other regions. But still bad and dangerous for the young birds…
Yes. Thank you for noticing. The waters are still pristine, but the plastic is so ubiquitous. It is one of our many negative lasting legacies on this planet.