We often hear the cuckoo at this time of year, but it's not often I manage to pin them down. When walking at the Muir of Dinnet yesterday, I followed the call of this cuckoo until eventually I saw it, in fact there were two of them, sitting on the telegraph wires. I'd been looking in the birch trees. It took me ages to get this shot, as I needed to get as high up as possible and get the trees behind the bird so that you could see it and not just a silhouette against the sky. Usually when I moved, they flew off, only to return further down the telegraph lines!
Despite their horrible habit of laying their eggs in other birds nests, the cuckoo seems to be a popular bird. Everyone loves to hear the call of the cuckoo. I read on the RSPB website that the cuckoo is on the red list in the UK (since 2021).
I also read that the cuckoo young hatch within 12 days, and they then push the hosts' eggs or babies out of the nest, allowing it to eat all the food brought by the host bird. By the time the cuckoo leaves the nest it is far bigger than the host bird, but the host bird keeps feeding the young cuckoo for a further two weeks! Given that their young are being raised by another bird, the cuckoo parents leave the UK in June, heading for Africa for the winter. Sounds to me like very selfish parenting!
Looks like a tightrope walker. We have channel billed cuckoos that come here and they are the ugliest birds in the world, I think. They arrive here from PNG and Indonesia. We also have koels but even though they don't look after their young they are nice looking birds.
Despite the distance there is still a lot of details about the bird visible in this photo. Interesting facts about the bird, some of which I think I had heard before but most not.
May 13th, 2023
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