Witness
says cormorant survived the plunge into a 200-foot-deep vortex in a California
reservoir
Erin
McCormick in San Francisco
Wed 6 Mar
2019 20.49 GMT Last modified on Thu 7 Mar 2019 20.20 GMT
What
happens when a small bird is swallowed by a gaping vortex?
The fate
of the unassuming-looking waterfowl was the subject of anguished debate
Wednesday as video surfaced of the animal disappearing into a 200ft-deep
tube in
a dammed reservoir in northern California.
When
water in Lake Berryessa is high enough, it spills into the 72ft-diameter drain,
nicknamed the Glory Hole, and is funneled 18 stories down, into a creek below
the dam. Recent heavy rains have meant the hole has seen plenty of action, and
the creek, which is normally about 25ft wide, now looks like a mighty river,
spanning a width of about 1,000ft, said Rick Fowler, the Lake Berryessa water
resources manager.
Such
circumstances do not bode well for the bird, which was pronounced a duck by
online commentators.
“From
what I understand, that water is going down really fast and when things come
out the other side … I don’t want to get really graphic,” said Brionna Ruff, a
spokeswoman for the Bureau of Reclamation, which owns the glory hole, known as
the Morning Glory spillway, in an article on SFGate.
Fowler,
who made the video and has worked at the lake for 11 years, had a different
story to tell.
He told
the Guardian he was taking a video of the hole when the bird, which he said was
actually a cormorant, suddenly appeared in the frame, floating near the
opening. After seeing the bird disappear down the hole, Fowler said, he ran to
the edge of the dam.
“Thwack –
it shot out of there like a bullet,” he said. “It looked like a rag doll – like
it was dead.”
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