I enjoyed a great wildlife experience today, really special!  It's not often that I am close enough to a Cuckoo to get a photo but today was different. It was almost by accident but I knew that there had been a Cuckoo regularly singing in this particular part of the moor and it wasn't a massive surprise to suddenly see one as we walked along a ridge towards some old hawthorns and a well grazed grassy area. This is so typical of a Cuckoo territory. Cuckoos like to feed by sighting large caterpillars on the grass from a high perch, I have seen them feeding like this previously. We quickly got down low to the ground and made our way  nearer, crawling  towards it, using the safety of a very low wall to conceal ourselves. We snapped off photographs all the while hoping that it would come closer to us and then suddenly……. we realised that  there were two.  One was definitely a female which is great news. There was some interaction between both birds and I heard the female bubbling from deep beneath a hawthorn before it flew out and perched in an exposed perch.  It's sex was really obvious, being smaller and with a more delicate head somehow but I wouldn't know how to describe this with any accuracy. However, if that wasn't enough, the bird had brown hues on the neck and parts of the wing coverts although it wasn't really obvious to see in the field.

Peering through the viewfinder of a camera makes it hard to keep track of whats going on around nearby so as I concentrated on the female, the male had flown to trees a little further away. The female continued to sight caterpillars and then fly down to them which I always enjoy watching.  After a while and disappointingly, it flew off to join the male and then the excitement was over leaving us with lots of photos and thankfully, after an evening sorting through them I have got a few photos worth keeping as a reminder of a great encounter and experience. I have taken photos of Cuckoos before and many of them are better than this series but I will take these pictures as a record of a good day. I also learnt even more about Cuckoos.  I discovered that females "buble call" and that males, as well as making the the two sylable call which gives  it's name….. incidentally this an onomatopoeia……..males also make a  "whacka…whacka" call which is quite distinctive once you have heard it.