8 - merimetso

Let me just say first that the picture below is indeed a really terrible picture. I'm not pretending for a moment that I'm providing a useful illustration of what these birds look like. The thing is, I was caught by surprise: I wasn't expecting to see any interesting birds at all when I walked up to the service area this morning, for a sandwich. The route passes the small pond where I used to see various species of birds, as written up (according to their Finnish names) in this ridiculous wildlife series previously. I only had my cheap smartphone on me, and taking bird pictures greatly exceeds the practical specs of its camera.

You might want to check back through this absurd little series. Most of the pictures were taken at this pond, though any future pics are likely to be taken at the much larger fish pond over on the other side of the dual carriageway here. It just became a thing for me, when I began to spot interesting birds at the small pond now and again, other than the common or garden mallard (= sinisorsa). There used to be more bird action there (birds and fishermen), but lots of new houses have been built nearby, and the service area has been expanded. I don't think they restock the fish there any more.

This is a cormorant, known in Finland as the merimetso. It's a large-ish seabird, though sometimes seen inland from the coast, as here. Except that all the time I've been coming this way, I'd never seen one here before. I don't know if it would have had any joy, since although it isn't a fussy eater, it pretty much has to be fish. Nevertheless, I watched it dive several times. It took off at one point and landed up the other end of the pond, giving me a little thrill (I'm easily pleased) and a flash of its white underside; sadly too quick for me to capture what would anyway have been a very blurred picture.

(an embarrassed warning - as this rambles on, there will be a childishly smutty anecdote towards the end)

The merimetso (by the way, the Finnish name translates as 'sea grouse') is found right round the world. I have an old but vivid memory of watching cormorants skimming the water off the coast of Maine in the US, emerging from and then disappearing into dense fog, making their haunting calls. And did you know that in the Far East, fishermen have used them to catch fish, putting a tie around their necks to prevent them swallowing their catch - obviously, they get a reward in the end! 

My lintuopas (bird guide) was published in 1996. This is interesting because while it gives the number of breeding pairs in Finland as ~1000 (migratory/seasonal numbers can be several times that), Wikipedia gives the current (estimated) figure as over 26,000. There's been a rapid increase since the end of the last century, which reflects a worldwide upward trend in their population. Earlier in the Twentieth Century they were persecuted; fishermen vastly overestimated their take from fishing stocks. Their principal enemy nowadays is probably the sea eagle.

There are a couple of other cormorant species relevant to this discussion.

One is a bird virtually never seen in the UK and only very rarely in Finland, when it's lost, the pygmy cormorant or pikkumerimetso, a much smaller bird found in Anatolia and further South East.

The other is the karimetso (sort of, 'rock grouse'), bigger than the pygmy but still rather smaller than the merimetso. There's more of a difference in its habits, in that it doesn't stray inland, and is much more confined to colonies on rocky cliffs. So we don't see it so often in the UK, although it does live and breed here and is quite common. In fact, it's found around all Europe's Atlantic coasts, but not in the Baltic, so it's very rarely seen in Finland. Visually it might be confused with the larger cormorant/merimetso, except for its lack of white plumage (as an adult).

At this point a British reader might wonder why I'm being so coy about its English name. Well, some years ago, a good friend over in the Merseyside direction got himself a very fancy camera and started taking bird pictures. One day, with great pride he forwarded to me a picture of a cormorant-type bird with a "Guess where I took this?" and yes it was from his living room window. Being very immature, I had to reply, "So you had a shag in your back garden??"

Due apologies. Especially since I knew perfectly well that a shag (= karimetso) would never have come inland like that, and it was of course a cormorant ie merimetso. If you're Finnish and you're still baffled about why this is (typically British) rude, I'll refer you to the Finnish translations of different meanings of 'shag' in my dictionary:

shag    s    1    merimetso
                 2    (tupakkalaatu) shag

            tr   1    naida