A lot of interest in a little nature reserve

This morning, at last, I had more than a few minutes to spend outside and decided to check out a local nature reserve which had been recommended to me. When I looked on the map, it appeared to be, as my mother would describe it, the size of two penn'orth (pennies worth!) of copper. In fact, whilst it wasn't enormous, there was a great deal to see. I wished I had taken the camera with the proper zoom lens but these will have to do for now:

There were lots of interesting birds around, including these cormorants, which I think of as a sea bird but apparently there are more of them living inland nowadays. I do like how the nature reserve has made the cormorants a little island to nest on:

I searched online for 'cormorant', and it turns out to be a rather controversial bird. Anglers seem to see them as a problem because they eat fish; fisheries can apply for licences to shoot them in order to protect their fish stocks. There doesn't seem to be any clear explanation of why there are more of them inland nowadays, maybe because of a decline in fish stocks around the coast or maybe because fisheries provide them with the equivalent of an 'all you can eat' buffet. I can't claim to be an expert but the view that shooting them creates a vacuum into which other cormorants will move seems pretty likely. It's also interesting that research shows that fish refuges within fisheries create safe spaces and reduce predation by some 80%, so maybe there are effective alternatives to shooting.