Audubon Magazine / Summer 2022

A Photographer Considers the Northwest’s Cormorant Quandary

In Morgan Heim’s images, the Columbia River’s colonies of trouble-making waterbirds become as fascinating as they can be frustrating.

Double-crested Cormorants take flight from a green bridge over a wide river. In the background are buildings on the river’s forested shore. — The Astoria-Megler Bridge, where thousands of Double-crested Cormorants have taken up residence in recent nesting seasons, has become a focal point of tensions over how to live with the fish-eating birds. Photo: Morgan Heim

Words by Andy McGlashen

Senior Editor, Audubon Magazine

Published Summer 2022

Double-crested Cormorants are survivors. Once in steep decline due largely to the effects of DDT, the sleek diving birds have rebounded mightily since a 1972 ban on the insecticide. But instead of celebration, their success has brought conflict.

Cormorants are prodigious piscivores, earning them the scorn of commercial and recreational fishers. For years they’ve been the target of government culling programs aimed at easing tensions, which run high around the Columbia River estuary.

Since moving to Astoria, Oregon, in 2017, conservation photographer Morgan Heim has been engrossed by the cormorant conundrum. She aims to both document the birds’ complicated relationship with humans and capture their beauty and intelligence. “I want people to be challenged,” Heim says. “How can we wonder at them and have empathy for them, even if they can be inconvenient?”

The Astoria-Megler Bridge spanning the lower Columbia River offers a case study in the cormorant’s knack for confounding people’s plans. Until recently, nearby East Sand Island hosted the continent’s largest cormorant colony, about 15,000 pairs. Each year they devoured some 11 million juvenile salmon and steelhead—consuming up to 17 percent of smolts making their way to the sea, some protected by the Endangered Species Act.

To safeguard the fish, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and partners began killing thousands of cormorants in 2015. The next year most remaining birds fled. A major colony has since formed at the bridge, where cormorants hamper renovation work and salmon and steelhead likely make up even more of their diet.

Double-crested Cormorants sit in nests and perch on the green underside of a bridge. White guano coats much of the structure. — Cormorant guano on the Astoria-Megler Bridge must be removed periodically to prevent corrosion. Photo: Morgan Heim

A diptych shows a cormorant on a nest with two eggs on the left, and a pair of cormorants on the same nest with two nestlings on the right. Behind them are other cormorants on a wooden structure on a cloudy day. — Heim’s timelapse images from the bridge offer fascinating insights into cormorant behavior. This pair persisted through an extreme heat wave and other perils to raise the nestlings on the right from the eggs on the left. Photos: Morgan Heim

A blue fishing vessel passes under a bridge as cormorants dot the structure and swirl above it. — Many people who make their livelihood from fishing view Double-crested Cormorants, including thousands of the fish-devouring birds that nest on the Astoria-Megler Bridge, as a nuisance. Photo: Morgan Heim

Two cormorants face each other with open beaks, sitting on a ledge on a green bridge. Another cormorant rests beneath them. — Empathetic with her neighbors whose lives are complicated by cormorant colonies, Heim is also interested in exploring the beauty, behaviors, and personalities of individual birds. Photo: Morgan Heim

The more than 8,000 cormorants that have taken up residence on the bridge in recent years complicate the current $24 million phase of the repainting project. Hoping to persuade the birds to nest elsewhere, this spring the Oregon Department of Transportation partnered with Wildlife Services, part of the U.S. Department of Agriculture, to haze them with pyrotechnics and other deterrents. Before painting, workers must pressure wash the structure to remove cormorant guano, which is acidic and corrosive.

Photographing the bridge maintenance has opened Heim’s eyes to the costs and complexities of living with the birds. “I think I’m a little more empathetic than I used to be about the people who are struggling with cormorants being here,” she says. But Heim has also been disturbed by bursts of vigilante violence against the birds; she has watched cormorants fall from the sky after cracks of gunfire.

A person in a white hard hat points an orange flare gun at the sky near cormorants that are taking flight from a green bridge. — Hoping to persuade cormorants to nest somewhere other than the Astoria-Megler Bridge, this spring the Oregon Department of Transportation partnered with Wildlife Services, part of the U.S. Department of Agriculture, to haze them with pyrotechnics and other deterrents. Photo: Morgan Heim

Cormorants scatter from beneath a bridge over a wide river as a flare streaks past, leaving a trail of smoke. — Cormorants scatter as a flare streaks beneath the bridge. Photo: Morgan Heim

Workers in orange and yellow stand on scaffolding beneath a bridge, using pressure washers to remove cormorant guano. — Pressure washing to remove corrosive cormorant guano is a big job, and a necessary piece of a larger bridge repainting project. Photo: Morgan Heim

A dead cormorant submerged in shallow water. — Heim has seen disturbing bursts of vigilante violence against cormorants like this one, which washed ashore after being shot. Photo: Morgan Heim

The Columbia River’s fishery relies on government subsidized hatcheries that raise and release tens of millions of juvenile salmon and steelhead each year. Double-crested Cormorants have caught on. The birds routinely travel up a tributary, the Youngs River, to gorge on captive-bred fish swimming to the Pacific Ocean.

Though the birds undoubtedly eat huge quantities of fish, some experts say they’re unfairly scapegoated.

To limit the casualties, workers at a facility farther downstream wait for a seaward tidal surge before releasing smolts from net pens at night, when cormorants are inactive. Though the birds undoubtedly eat huge quantities of fish, some experts say they’re unfairly scapegoated for doing what they’ve always done, while dams, overfishing, and other human activities drive fishery declines.

“It’s easy to develop the perception that cormorants are having some impact on a fish species we’re interested in,” says Don Lyons, director of conservation science for Audubon’s Seabird Institute. “It’s actually rarely substantiated that that impact is significant.”

At a dock area surrounded by tall posts, workers adjust a net in the water at night. — To limit predation by cormorants, workers release juvenile fish from net pens into a Columbia River tributary at night, when the birds are inactive, during a tidal surge that will carry them quickly to sea. Photo: Morgan Heim

Cormorants swim behind a wooden structure with metal posts in a river. — Cormorants swim outside net pens that hold salmon raised in hatcheries. The birds have learned that each spring hatchery workers release millions of fish in the cormorant equivalent of an all-you-can-eat buffet. Photo: Morgan Heim

A Double-crested Cormorant splashes to the surface of a river with a small fish in its bill as other cormorants swim nearby. — A Double-crested Cormorant emerges from the Youngs River with a juvenile salmon. Photo: Morgan Heim

A flock of cormorants flies low over a river that winds through a green, foggy landscape. — Cormorants routinely travel up a tributary, the Youngs River, to gorge on captive-bred fish swimming to the Pacific Ocean. Photo: Morgan Heim

Although Double-crested Cormorants tend to generate antipathy when they amass in noisy, noisome colonies, an individual bird can inspire a much different response.

In 2015 a wounded juvenile female arrived at the Wildlife Center of the North Coast, an Astoria rehabilitation facility. Too injured for release, Cormie has stayed on at the center, charming its staff, volunteers, and visitors, and becoming an ambassador for her species’ elegance and charisma.

“Everything about her is amazing,” says Melisa Colvin, the center’s bird curator. Cormie has been a quick learner. Among her new skills: assisting staff with her health checks and soliciting donations. Colvin always liked cormorants, but forming a bond with Cormie, who excitedly flaps her wings when Colvin approaches, has deepened her belief that the species deserves more respect.

“When I look out at those birds on the bridge,” she says, “I see her.”

A Double-crested Cormorant looks at the camera. Its yellow bill, whitish feather tufts, and striking blue-green eyes stand out against its black plumage. — Too injured to be safely returned to the wild, Cormie—a Double-crested Cormorant brought to an Astoria rehabilitation center in 2015—has become an ambassador for her species’ elegance and charisma. Photo: Morgan Heim

A woman in a gray jacket reaches into a small pool where a Double-crested Cormorant is swimming. Behind them is a wooden fence. — While Cormie has many fans, she is most closely bonded with Melisa Colvin, bird curator at the Wildlife Center of the North Coast. Colvin has trained Cormie to participate in her own health check-ups. Photo: Morgan Heim

A Double-crested Cormorant standing in a plastic crate uses its bill to pull closed the crate’s metal-wire door. The lower half of a person is shown to the left of the crate. — Cormie has also learned to close the door to her crate. Photo: Morgan Heim

A Double-crested Cormorant plays with a white plastic ball. — Colvin and colleagues at the facility make sure Cormie has plenty of enrichment activities. Photo: Morgan Heim

A child watches as a Double-crested Cormorant drops a dollar bill from its bill into a wooden collection box. — Cormie’s enrichment activities have included lessons in the delicate art of fundraising. Photo: Morgan Heim

This story originally ran in the Summer 2022 issue as “Consider the Cormorant.” To receive our print magazine, become a member by making a donation today.