One of my favorite birds is the cormorant.

This is largely because I can recognize it, and there are many on the river near the cabin.

So imagine my annoyance when realizing that there is a campaign under way to undermine this graceful bird.

State officials, including senators Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins, have expressed concern.

In another part of the country, wildlife officials in Michigan have granted certain outdoorsman the right to shoot them, or destroy their nests.

Are they really that bad?

Cormorants, large and dark, are accused of eating a lot of fish that fishermen want to catch.

Especially salmon.

I am not diminishing this concern.

Fishing, along with tourism, are mainstays of the state's economy - and a recreational activity that almost everyone appreciates.

But cormorants seem majestic to me.

State officials say they were once depleted by coastal habitat destruction and pollution, but are now protected under the federal Migratory Bird Treaty Act.

Close observers say that now they are "ubiquitous" along the Maine coast.

On the river near my cabin, I see cormorants flapping low from one end of the (visible) river to the other.

My other thrills are seeing an osprey each summer, the large gliding bird that could be mistaken for an eagle if you are from Brooklyn on a one week hiatus.

And my part of the river hosts a very large heron.

I haven't seen offspring of these mature birds.

But I have seen the osprey and the heron every year now for about three.

It must be clear by now that Your Scribe is not a denizen of the backwoods.

Maybe that's why I feel a little miffed that the cormorant is being blamed for the minimal salmon population in Maine rivers.

Or otherwise "fishing out" its waters.

If you want to blame someone for the disappearance of the salmon, blame the captains of industry who built dams to generate the hydropower for the mills in central Maine.

I find cormorants to be without guilt.

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