Confiding Cuckoo.
12th May 2019
I decided to visit another of my Cuckoo sites two days ago, the weather was showery but that doesn’t bother Cuckoos. People associate them with warm sunny climates and rightly so, but they do ‘tough it out’ when they have to. I have had a lot to do with Cuckoos over the years, watching and photographing them for a long time now. Most people are content to just hear their call in the distance but never get to see the vocalist. That was never enough for me and I have always had a fascination for these enigmatic yet iconic birds that visit us each year for such a brief time. Sometime in late April or early May people realise that they have just heard a Cuckoo, usually in the distance, and a few weeks later they realise they haven’t heard a Cuckoo for a while. By the middle of June the Cuckoos call tends to fall away and all too quickly before we realise it they are gone again, hopefully having successfully laid an egg in an unwitting Meadow Pipit, Dunnock or Reed Warbler’s nest. I hear people saying all the time that they have never seen a Cuckoo, and that’s sad, they should make the effort because they are missing out on seeing a really characterful and often comical bird. The variety of noises they make will surprise anybody that hears it and they are also a very attractive bird to see.
I always make an effort to see Cuckoos every spring because I don’t know how long that privilege will last, because their numbers are dropping and also I won’t be around for ever, so I intend to make the most of it. I make no apology for my fascination with these wonderful birds!
This particular site is one of about six regular sites that I visit every spring and at least half of those sites always have Cuckoos in residence. I could hear a male bird calling on my arrival at this site and I picked him out on a quite prominent dead tree stump. This was a very positive start because Cuckoos are very much creatures of habit and there was a good chance that he would come back to that tree stump at times throughout the day. I waited for him to fly and then I quickly got to a position about fifty feet away under a dense hawthorn bush that was just about level with the tree stump – there’s nothing worse than looking up to take a photograph, apart from the potential silhouetting there’s the poor perspective to take into account. I did a little judicious pruning of the hawthorn to make it more comfortable for me and then settled down and waited.
I knew it would happen sooner or later and all it takes is small birds, usually Meadow Pipits or Chaffinch to mob the Cuckoo and make it fly and hopefully land on its favoured perches. I waited for some time, there’s no alternative, but at last the Cuckoo came flying towards the tree stump, you always know when a Cuckoo is going to perch by the way it flies, it starts to flutter its wings on approach. It landed on the stump and began to ‘Cuckoo’ straight away and I was able to take many shots.
This particular Cuckoo seemed OK with me being sat there, I was subdued colour-wise and very quiet and this is a fundamental - no sudden movements and no noise!! However, the sky was rapidly darkening.
Before too long it started to rain and the rain intensified until there was a huge hailstone storm. The Cuckoo had gone for cover after it got too heavy and I thought that was it for the day. Sometime later when I had emerged from the dense cover of the hawthorn, remarkably he came back to his obviously favourite perch and the photography resumed, now in a rather delightful pale light.
I was in total able to take a multitude of shots of this Cuckoo in various poses and lighting situations, from inky blue, steel grey to a light beige. It was quite a remarkable session with a very confiding bird, and has only served to increase my affection for these wonderful birds.
I always make an effort to see Cuckoos every spring because I don’t know how long that privilege will last, because their numbers are dropping and also I won’t be around for ever, so I intend to make the most of it. I make no apology for my fascination with these wonderful birds!
This particular site is one of about six regular sites that I visit every spring and at least half of those sites always have Cuckoos in residence. I could hear a male bird calling on my arrival at this site and I picked him out on a quite prominent dead tree stump. This was a very positive start because Cuckoos are very much creatures of habit and there was a good chance that he would come back to that tree stump at times throughout the day. I waited for him to fly and then I quickly got to a position about fifty feet away under a dense hawthorn bush that was just about level with the tree stump – there’s nothing worse than looking up to take a photograph, apart from the potential silhouetting there’s the poor perspective to take into account. I did a little judicious pruning of the hawthorn to make it more comfortable for me and then settled down and waited.
I knew it would happen sooner or later and all it takes is small birds, usually Meadow Pipits or Chaffinch to mob the Cuckoo and make it fly and hopefully land on its favoured perches. I waited for some time, there’s no alternative, but at last the Cuckoo came flying towards the tree stump, you always know when a Cuckoo is going to perch by the way it flies, it starts to flutter its wings on approach. It landed on the stump and began to ‘Cuckoo’ straight away and I was able to take many shots.
This particular Cuckoo seemed OK with me being sat there, I was subdued colour-wise and very quiet and this is a fundamental - no sudden movements and no noise!! However, the sky was rapidly darkening.
Before too long it started to rain and the rain intensified until there was a huge hailstone storm. The Cuckoo had gone for cover after it got too heavy and I thought that was it for the day. Sometime later when I had emerged from the dense cover of the hawthorn, remarkably he came back to his obviously favourite perch and the photography resumed, now in a rather delightful pale light.
I was in total able to take a multitude of shots of this Cuckoo in various poses and lighting situations, from inky blue, steel grey to a light beige. It was quite a remarkable session with a very confiding bird, and has only served to increase my affection for these wonderful birds.