Hai Collection, Middle Volume Radical: Bird (niǎo) Character: ci Kangxi Dictionary strokes: 21 Page 1497, Entry 15 Pronounced zi. The cormorant is a water bird. According to the Piya (the dictionary of physical lore), the bird resembles a raptor but is black in color. Another name for it is yi. According to the Erya (the progress of refined words), which discusses birds, it is called ci-yi. The commentary by Guo Pu states that this is the cormorant. Li Shizhen notes that in books of rhymes, both lu and zi signify black. This bird is dark black in color, which is why it bears this name. The name yi is an onomatopoeic representation of its cry. It is also called the water crow. It is also known as the black demon. According to the Kuizhou Tujing (the illustrated classic of Kuizhou), the people of Kuizhou use cormorants to catch fish and refer to them as black demons. Du Fu, in his poem Venting Frustration (Qianmen Shi), wrote that every household raises black demons. Yang Fu, in his Strange Things Record (Yiwuzhi), notes that the cormorant can dive into deep water to catch fish to eat; it does not lay eggs, but rather gestates its young in marshes and ponds, conceiving and then expelling them to be born, producing as many as seven or eight or as few as five or six, one after another like a thread. According to the Zhengzitong (the manual of correct characters), the cormorant is colloquially called the merciful old one. When people raise them, they tie a string around their crop so that only small fish can pass, while larger fish cannot be swallowed; when the time comes, they make the bird cough up the fish and then release it back into the water. Its beak is curved like a hook, and its throat is as hot as boiling water, causing the fish to decay once swallowed, which spoils the flavor. Also pronounced zi. The meaning is the same.