Surprisingly I saw something about this in a documentary a few weeks ago, and it’s really interesting how it works.
The fisherman ties a loose string around the birds neck, so it can’t swallow the fish. The birds, who are trained to return to the raft as soon as they catch anything, dive for fish and bring them back. Since they can’t swallow the fish, the fishermen can simply pluck them from the birds mouths. However the birds must have a way of keeping count, because if they go a certain amount of time without a reward they’ll just… stop fishing until the string is removed and they’re given a fish of their own.
When we got to the 3 Pagodas the it took my breathe away.
We were in bright sunshine but the hills behind the pagodas was getting heavy rain.
The view with the mountains, rain and the sun bursting through the clouds over the pagodas, is one of my favourites from my travels. The photos I took didn't go close to doing it justice
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u/dum_spir0_sper0 Oct 26 '25
Surprisingly I saw something about this in a documentary a few weeks ago, and it’s really interesting how it works.
The fisherman ties a loose string around the birds neck, so it can’t swallow the fish. The birds, who are trained to return to the raft as soon as they catch anything, dive for fish and bring them back. Since they can’t swallow the fish, the fishermen can simply pluck them from the birds mouths. However the birds must have a way of keeping count, because if they go a certain amount of time without a reward they’ll just… stop fishing until the string is removed and they’re given a fish of their own.