There’s a very persistent cormorant hanging around Alder Lake (the biggest of our three) this year. Just one, but one is more than enough. Fishery owners don’t like cormorants. They can do a lot of damage to valuable fish. Cormorants are protected so you can’t do anything drastic to make them go away. So when we see them, we run around waving our arms and whooping to scare them off. It’s a good job we have no neighbours! Surprisingly, acting like maniacs can be pretty effective, but obviously this guy has seen it all before.

So today, inspired by what some fellow lake-owning friends have done, we made two scaremorants – scarecrows for cormorants.

The first step looks like we’re getting ready for Easter early, or are about to sacrifice one of the children.

 

But add some clothes, and you can see where we’re going with this!

Time to put them in place. Cappy went on the east side of the lake. His silver fingers sparkled in a nice cormorant-frightening way in the sunshine.

And Hoodie on the opposite side. His dangling CDs are very effective.

Between scaremorant emplacement, Chris took time out to tut-tut over the latest mole hill. There seems to be a plague of moles this year.

Chris hates moles!

It remains to be seen how effective the scaremorants are, but we had fun making them!

Photo 6 and or 7