Introduction

I introduce the cormorant and its cultural history as ‘hated’ bird, noting that the book is both the history of a bird and a book about greed and prejudice. I distinguish between the zoological cormorant and the cultural cormorant, and I describe the cormorant’s centrality to conflict between the fishing industry and environmentalists, not least in Europe, and I also address the tendency of tree-nesting cormorants to kill their nest trees with their droppings. I then turn to parts of the world (Norway, Japan, China) where cormorants have at times been viewed positively, but I finish by noting the variety of ways – often contradictory ways – in which the bird has been understood as evil and has been the object of prejudice.