Birds of a feather dry together

The summer cruising season is now over and my boat is back at its home base on the River Suck but, thanks to the fact that it has a small solid fuel stove, I can still use it during the autumn and winter. 

I woke in my bunk the other morning and pulled aside the curtain to see what the weather was like. I was confronted by the sight of a cormorant a few metres away, perched on the floating jetty with its wings spread out and its neck stretched upwards.

At one time, there were arguments about why cormorants adopt this odd pose. Some people claimed that it helped them digest a crop full of fish. We now know that it’s for a much more obvious reason — they are just drying their feathers.