In scene reminiscent of Hitchcock's "The Birds", thousands of cormorants strip trees, devour fish; Toronto, Ontario, CA

TheStar.com | GTA | 30,000 cormorants destroying lakeside park:
May 20, 2009 04:30 AM
Leslie Scrivener
Staff Reporter
Dark and swift, flocks of cormorants soar above Lake Ontario before hundreds of them finally dip down to the diamond-flecked water. It's a stirring sight on a bright spring day.

But cormorants are less beautiful on land.

One arm of the Leslie Street Spit, home to Tommy Thompson Park and the Great Lakes' largest colony of cormorants, looks like a wintry apocalypse. There are no trees now, just a few guano-spattered snags. This is where cormorants first settled in the park in 1990. They now number about 30,000.