This squadron of Cormorants was rafting, quite successfully, in Cardiff Bay, though they were constantly being disturbed by all the marine traffic.

I’ve blogged about this rafting behaviour before, including a quote from research covering the effectiveness of this fishing behaviour, in Rafting Cormorants, December 2022. I thought I’d cover this again, as the squadron was quite close, and it was large, and my photos are better than previously, and I was only one of several people who stopped to watch them.

When preparing this blog I discovered that the collective nouns for Cormorants include squadron (hence the title of this blog), raft (a reference to the behaviour shown here), the standard bird word flock, and – I loved this one – gulp, presumably a nod to how they manage to swallow down enormous fish.