Good Omen
When I turned my head up to breathe in the water, a bold bird stared at me. The friendly cormorant swam alongside me, occasionally stretching his yellow beak to the sky. He looked me in the eye when I asked him if he lived here all winter long. Then he dove surfacing 20 feet away, his neck bulging as he swallowed a fish. Satisfied with his snack, he hopped on a rock to comb his feathers with his serrated claw.
Cormorants are a good omen, suggesting bounty. In some fishing communities they are fitted with a neck ring and are trained to retrieve fish which the fishermen extract from their beaks. When the catch is good, the ring is slipped off to let the hard-working birds feed themselves. My solitary bird obviously ate well at Mt. Tom Pond, but needed some company because he continued to plunge, surface far away, gulp down his minnows, then return to my side.