Photographing Cuckoos.
08th May 2019
Spring is well and truly upon us now, but you wouldn’t think so looking out of the window of my little office at home from where I create this website, because as I write grey skies and rain are dominating. However, it’s going to be short lived according to the met office and warm weather is coming in for the weekend. Here in the Brecon Beacons the enigmatic Cuckoo has once again graced us with its presence and the male bird’s iconic call is reverberating around the uplands. This call is etched into the natural history of our countryside and I wouldn’t like to imagine a spring without it!
A woman emailed me a few weeks ago asking about Cuckoos, because she had heard one calling last year while out walking and thought, (to use her words), ‘it was magical’, and rightly so because a Cuckoo’s call can have an effect on our psyche, it can influence the way people feel when they hear it. Many people have seen a Cuckoo without realising it, they know the call but they don’t know what the bird looks like. One may have fluttered across a road in front of their car and they just don’t equate what they saw with a Cuckoo and many Cuckoos have been mistaken for birds of prey, most commonly Sparrowhawks.
The real prize, however, is getting close to these beautiful birds and you have to be prepared to work hard to do so. Firstly you have to pin down exactly where the birds are calling from and this can involve detailed observation. Once this has been established you have to then finalise what the bird’s favourite perches are and sometimes these perches are totally inaccessible and that could be the end of it for that particular bird. However, if one of the bird’s favourite perches is approachable then it’s a matter of camouflaging yourself nearby in a hide or under a tree with netting etc. etc.
Cuckoos are very street- wise and are extremely wary of people and they are always watching the surrounding countryside from their perches, looking for available opportunities, so they will see you if you try and approach them. They even call and are alert in semi darkness, as I once found out while setting up a hide.
Yesterday I was out very early at one of about six regular sites I know, where Cuckoos will usually be. Typically it is an upland area with sparsely populated trees and bushes overlooking rough grassland where Meadow Pipits nest.
There’s no magic formula – that’s where they will be!
This particular site has a long dry stone wall bordering the rough grassland with a few hawthorn bushes dotted around. I know these birds like to perch in the tops of these hawthorns when the area is quiet. When I arrived I could hear a bird calling nearby but I didn’t have a great deal of time because I was only on a recon mission. My main objective was to look for Dotterel a few miles away up on top of a local hill – which sadly drew a blank again!
I decided to just place a large ‘Bean – Bag’ on top of this wall opposite to where these hawthorn bushes are. I had a lens placed on top of the bag and some ‘Camo’ netting draped over me - it was a long shot, and I knew it, but that’s all I had time for. I had been there for about half an hour and frustratingly the calling Cuckoo was not coming near and I was thinking about calling it a day when another male bird started calling behind me. I decided to wait a bit longer because two birds really are better than one because they can interact and when this happens any scenario can occur. This is because if they get into a territorial spat then they will fly and perch anywhere during these encounters. They become totally preoccupied and can sometimes perch much closer to the lucky observer than they would normally do. This is also the time a fortunate birder/photographer gets to hear the large variety of noises they make, snorts, gasps, croaks etc. these are noises you will never hear from a distance.
Suddenly it all kicked off as the bird from behind me flew into the area of these hawthorns, this immediately galvanized the other calling Cuckoo to come in like a missile. They were buzzing around the hawthorns making those noises and then incredibly one bird landed right in front of me, I focussed the lens and was just about to fire the shutter when a Chaffinch bombed in and forced the Cuckoo off the top of the bush - I like Chaffinches but I cursed that one!! Then the same bird, having escaped the mobbing Chaffinch, perched on the top of another of the hawthorns. This time I fired the shutter and I had him – ‘In the can’ to use motion picture parlance. However, it was only perched there for about five seconds before a Meadow Pipit mobbed it and that was it, you really haven’t got much time with these birds.
In the images below it looks like the Cuckoo is settled but believe me it certainly was not, it’s just that the shutter speed has frozen the action!
I really had a slice of luck getting the shot but there have been many times over the years when it’s gone the other way - so I’ll take it when it comes.
A woman emailed me a few weeks ago asking about Cuckoos, because she had heard one calling last year while out walking and thought, (to use her words), ‘it was magical’, and rightly so because a Cuckoo’s call can have an effect on our psyche, it can influence the way people feel when they hear it. Many people have seen a Cuckoo without realising it, they know the call but they don’t know what the bird looks like. One may have fluttered across a road in front of their car and they just don’t equate what they saw with a Cuckoo and many Cuckoos have been mistaken for birds of prey, most commonly Sparrowhawks.
The real prize, however, is getting close to these beautiful birds and you have to be prepared to work hard to do so. Firstly you have to pin down exactly where the birds are calling from and this can involve detailed observation. Once this has been established you have to then finalise what the bird’s favourite perches are and sometimes these perches are totally inaccessible and that could be the end of it for that particular bird. However, if one of the bird’s favourite perches is approachable then it’s a matter of camouflaging yourself nearby in a hide or under a tree with netting etc. etc.
Cuckoos are very street- wise and are extremely wary of people and they are always watching the surrounding countryside from their perches, looking for available opportunities, so they will see you if you try and approach them. They even call and are alert in semi darkness, as I once found out while setting up a hide.
Yesterday I was out very early at one of about six regular sites I know, where Cuckoos will usually be. Typically it is an upland area with sparsely populated trees and bushes overlooking rough grassland where Meadow Pipits nest.
There’s no magic formula – that’s where they will be!
This particular site has a long dry stone wall bordering the rough grassland with a few hawthorn bushes dotted around. I know these birds like to perch in the tops of these hawthorns when the area is quiet. When I arrived I could hear a bird calling nearby but I didn’t have a great deal of time because I was only on a recon mission. My main objective was to look for Dotterel a few miles away up on top of a local hill – which sadly drew a blank again!
I decided to just place a large ‘Bean – Bag’ on top of this wall opposite to where these hawthorn bushes are. I had a lens placed on top of the bag and some ‘Camo’ netting draped over me - it was a long shot, and I knew it, but that’s all I had time for. I had been there for about half an hour and frustratingly the calling Cuckoo was not coming near and I was thinking about calling it a day when another male bird started calling behind me. I decided to wait a bit longer because two birds really are better than one because they can interact and when this happens any scenario can occur. This is because if they get into a territorial spat then they will fly and perch anywhere during these encounters. They become totally preoccupied and can sometimes perch much closer to the lucky observer than they would normally do. This is also the time a fortunate birder/photographer gets to hear the large variety of noises they make, snorts, gasps, croaks etc. these are noises you will never hear from a distance.
Suddenly it all kicked off as the bird from behind me flew into the area of these hawthorns, this immediately galvanized the other calling Cuckoo to come in like a missile. They were buzzing around the hawthorns making those noises and then incredibly one bird landed right in front of me, I focussed the lens and was just about to fire the shutter when a Chaffinch bombed in and forced the Cuckoo off the top of the bush - I like Chaffinches but I cursed that one!! Then the same bird, having escaped the mobbing Chaffinch, perched on the top of another of the hawthorns. This time I fired the shutter and I had him – ‘In the can’ to use motion picture parlance. However, it was only perched there for about five seconds before a Meadow Pipit mobbed it and that was it, you really haven’t got much time with these birds.
In the images below it looks like the Cuckoo is settled but believe me it certainly was not, it’s just that the shutter speed has frozen the action!
I really had a slice of luck getting the shot but there have been many times over the years when it’s gone the other way - so I’ll take it when it comes.