Feeling cuckoo
06th September 2022
Our visiting cuckoos came late this spring but their distinctive call constantly echoed and reverberated across the fields. It was hard to tell just how many visited us but I can confirm there were at least two!
Unusually I had a lot of sightings of them in flight or at the top of one particular dead tree but I was never in a place where I could photograph them.
So it was a huge surprise on an early morning jaunt across the fields yesterday when I spied an exciting find.
A young cuckoo no less, perched on tree protective surrounds to look for caterpillars and insects moving on the ground below. Several times it dived to the ground and then returned to another perch to digest its grubs.
It seemed completely unfazed by my presence, very independent and a capable hunter. Its presence raises so many questions about how instinctively it knows how to be a cuckoo when it has never had that nurturing help from either parent.
Unusually I had a lot of sightings of them in flight or at the top of one particular dead tree but I was never in a place where I could photograph them.
So it was a huge surprise on an early morning jaunt across the fields yesterday when I spied an exciting find.
A young cuckoo no less, perched on tree protective surrounds to look for caterpillars and insects moving on the ground below. Several times it dived to the ground and then returned to another perch to digest its grubs.
It seemed completely unfazed by my presence, very independent and a capable hunter. Its presence raises so many questions about how instinctively it knows how to be a cuckoo when it has never had that nurturing help from either parent.