While my wife and I were in Venice, Florida for a family visit, we took the opportunity for a couple of trips down the road to the Venice Rookery. There we got to watch cormorants feasting on catfish in the pond. Here are a few photos and a video.

(Click on the photos for a larger image)

Cormorant drying in the sun.

I saw this cormorant bring up a catfish, jiggle it around, apparently attempting to position it for a swallow, and then dive with it back underwater several times. Eventually it came up without the fish, apparently having lost it. A few minutes later, however, it started fishing again, and came up with another (or the same?) catfish.

Cormorant with its catfish catch

The cormorant once again swam around trying to reposition the fish. It finally gave it a toss into the air to get it head-first.

The cormorant gave its catch a toss to position the catfish headfirst.

With the catfish almost properly positioned, the cormorant prepared to swallow it.

Cormorant -with catfish, about to swallow.

The cormorant jiggled the fish a few more times, and then swam behind a tree to swallow the fish – out of sight, so no photo! (Stick around, though, for the later video…) Hunger sated, it swam back to the branch it had been on, climbed out of the water, and shook itself off like a dog.

Cormorant – Phalacrocorax autitus – shaking itself dry

And then spread its wings once again to dry in the sun.

Cormorant drying in the sun

Fortunately I came back a day or so later, and another cormorant caught another catfish, and I was fortunate enough to catch it on video…