This Little Pied Cormorant was looking at me

Little Pied Cormorant flying over me

Canon EOS R1 with a Canon RF 200-800mm F6.3-9 IS USM Lens [ISO 1250, 637mm, f/9.0 and 1/2500])

Little Pied Cormorants (Microcarbo melanoleucos) are a common bird around Narooma, and most of coastal Australia. They are adept swimmers, often chasing schools of small fish in very shallow water to obtain a feed or taking invertebrates from the bottom. When they want to move to a new area they easily take-off from the water, initially flapping their wings to get their bodies out of their water, then almost jumping across the water with their webbed feet to help get them airborne. This particular cormorant in the photo was flying over the sandflats at Narooma while I was photographing there in January. It was only when I was processing the photographs that I noticed that in the series I took as it approached me that the bird’s head was turned down on one side, with its eye appearing to be looking at me. There was probably some other reason for the bird to have its head like this, but it did appear as if it was carefully considering me.