Mea culpa... I haven't actually started long-distance biking yet—I've been too busy and, frankly, it's been too chilly—but if I had been, I would have stopped the bike along River Road in Westerly, taken out the camera in the backpack, and photographed the congregation of Double-crested Cormorants that, for the past couple of weeks, have been hanging out on a dead tree in the rain-swollen Pawcatuck River. You can almost set your watch by the gathering, since the dark birds with their striking orange throats arrive here towards the end of March to feast on piscine prey waiting their turn below the Potter Hill Dam to migrate upstream or downstream through a fish ladder. To capture this handsome DCC, I took the dude route: I was on my way into town on a shopping trip, stopped the car within sight of the dead tree, and just happened to be toting the heavy Sigma supertelephoto, the perfect lens for the job... but not one you'd want to bike with. The birds were exceeding cooperative and one of them even fanned his head crests—the field mark that gives the species its common name—in a rare display of erect head feathers. Almost always, the DCC favors that slick-backed look of ancient, Brylcream doo-wop rockers.