Cormorants return to Canyon Lake

Troublesome birds come in with the winter, may go out with a bang

By AARON CLAVERIE - Staff Writer | Saturday, March 29, 2008 12:58 AM PDT ∞

CANYON LAKE ---- The cormorants have returned, but they better watch their backs.

Each year, from around late January through the end of May, the 383-acre lake in the center of the gated community of Canyon Lake is home to hundreds and sometimes thousands of cormorants, fish-eating birds who gobble up the lake's bass and hang out in droves on the lake's islands.

In the last few weeks, as the weather has improved, more Canyon Lake residents, fishing in the lake or walking the golf course, are noticing the birds, said Paul Johnson, operations manager for the community's property owners association.

Canyon Lake is an incorporated city, but the association handles road repairs and maintenance of the landscaping within the gates of the development, a 40-year-old master planned community that features 14 miles of lakefront shoreline.

On Friday, Johnson said there were around 1,500 cormorants in Canyon Lake.

While some residents are complaining, blaming the birds for a depleted fish population, Johnson said they haven't become a big problem.

If they do, however, the association will be ready.

Earlier this year, the association's board passed a resolution authorizing the use of "pyrotechnics" to harass the birds.

Johnson said the resolution was introduced in part because of the 2005 cormorant season, when the lake was mobbed by 6,000 birds.

Looking for a way to deal with that unruly gulp of cormorants, the association consulted California Department of Fish and Game officials. (A group of cormorants is called a "gulp," according to the San Diego Zoo's Web site.)

Johnson said the birds are protected under the federal Migratory Bird Treaty Act, which means no private company or public agency can use lethal methods of control on the birds without a federal permit.

Fish and Game officials told the association there are no regulations, however, that prohibit harassing the birds to get them to fly to another spot.

So the association went to work, gathering up volunteers who shooed the birds away.

Some of the pyrotechnics used in 2005 included bird whistles, lasers and what Johnson referred to as "bottle rockets without the sticks": flares that were fired above heavily infested trees.

The combination of methods worked very well, Johnson said, and the birds moved on to quieter, less bothersome, locales.

But, as he found out, the birds eventually get wise.

"They get used to it," Johnson said. "They just kind of laugh at it."

Cormorants ---- the name comes from the Latin for "sea crow" ---- are considered very intelligent animals and that description seems appropriate given their fishing skills.

As described by Johnson, a gulp of cormorants will work together as a team, diving together to push fish into the tip of a finger lake.

When the fish are gathered together, churning the water, the birds dive, grabbing fish by the mouthful.

Some cormorants migrate from Northern California to Southern California during the winter, said Joan Jewett, spokeswoman for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service's Pacific regional office in Portland, Ore. But there are some, like some people, who choose to live in Southern California year-round.

"The weather is so nice, why leave?" she asked.

Confirming the information offered by Johnson, Jewett said a homeowners association does not need a permit to harass cormorants, which are huge problems for some fish farming operations and eastern cities.

Jewett said she has heard about similar problems with large bird populations descending on residential communities or golf courses in other parts of the West.

It's largely due to the relative rarity, from the bird's perspective, of finding large bodies of water in desert terrains, she said.

In the late 1960s and early 1970s, the cormorant population was nearing extinction in North America because of use of the pesticide DDT, said Nicholas Throckmorton, a Virginia-based U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service spokesman.

Throckmorton said cormorants were dying after eating fish that had been exposed to the DDT.

After the pesticide was banned in 1972, however, the cormorant population rebounded ---- and then some.

Earlier this decade, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service relaxed the rules on how businesses and property owners could deal with the birds, who were ganging up in large gulps and cleaning out fish farms and popular fishing ponds.

Sometimes, entire islands would be engulfed by the birds, Throckmorton said.

The situation in Canyon Lake is not nearly that serious, Johnson said.

But, if it gets "really bad," he said volunteers will gather again and try to get the birds to fly somewhere else.

Somewhere, a cormorant is chuckling.

Contact staff writer Aaron Claverie at (951) 676-4315, Ext. 2624, or aclaverie@californian.com. Comment at www.californian.com.

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