Its that time of year again, when the cormorants gather in fair number on Mere Lake. There's about 50 there at the moment, and no doubt plenty of others elsewhere in the Fen Drayton Lakes reserve.
Whereas the cormorant have roosted on Mere Lake but seem to have gone to other lakes to fish for the last couple of years, I've seen them hunting as a pack on Mere Lake itself again this year. I've not seen them really drive fish shoals into the shallows yet though, and there aren't many egret and herons around Mere Lake to take advantage of them doing so, though there were 5 great egret, 3 heron and 6 or so little egret when I last went (as of 28/09/22).
I guess that its taken a few years for the numbers of fish in Mere Lake to recover from previous cormorant 'plunderings' for it to be worth the cormorant fishing there? The Great Egret in the photo here (taken from Coucher Hide) took 3 fish of similar size to this Perch over the course of 30 minutes or so, so I reckon it was doing OK..
There were also 3 glossy ibis still feeding at Mere Lake - as there has been for several months now, though whether these are always the same ones I couldn't say.