Monday 11 June 2007
Hunter Crow Ducks
BlueJ is a major Thomas Aquinas fan, but today she is to be compared to another sainted Thomas because yesterday, when we were in the park indulging her love of baby creatures, in this case principally signets and ducklings, she didn't believe me when I told her about the Chinese practice of using ducks to fish with, or as she put it, using 'hunter ducks'. However, Bill B, who has been in China recently, has come to my aid on this one, the only problem being that, like myself, Bill doesn't seem to distinguish between a 'duck' and what is in fact, a 'Cormorant'. (Actually, Bill does, there's a just a bit of a typo.) There is no actual need for the inverted commas around 'cormorant' because these creatures are not so-called cormorants, despite my confusion, they are just cormorants. I feel only very marginally less silly about having mistaken a cormorant for a duck, thanks to the Canadian Wildlife Service Cormorant Fact Sheet, which claims that such creatures are, or perhaps should be, called 'Crow Ducks'. (Just think, it could have been so much worse, I could have been talking about hunter crow ducks.) Having said that, I'm still unsure if the term 'crow duck' applies to all cormorants or only North American continent cormorants and I'm too lazy to find out.
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4 comments:
Only thought of the title after I'd finished writing the entry, which makes it all a bit reflexively post-modern, glorying in the fallibility of the text; exactly what Viola was talking about in her entry. Yes, I didn't really think that through, did I?
Ok so at a basic conceptual level the thing is true, these people are using birds to do their fishing for them. But I still can't begin to imagine how this actually works. Do they come when they're called? Are people blowing duck (cormorant) whistles under water to make them come back? Why aren't they savaging everyone within reach? Actually it's just occurred to me that it is perfectly possible (and credible) to train a falcon to hunt so I don't know why I find the aquatic version so problematic. It's probably the essential duckishness. I still find the idea highly unlikely.
Right, I followed the link, it's true, there's a picture and everything. Comorants are also called shags, you know.
Not even going to touch the shag thing...
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