Monday 17 June 2013

"Cuckoo - Cuckoo"

I went to Tadewara Marsh again on June 8th to look for the snipe. Surprisingly, there was completely none! I didn't hear even a single bird calling. It left me clueless about where have they gone. So I just had to spend my time taking photos of some other stuff. Chestnut-eared Buntings were common and showy as usual and I'll post more photos of them later. Other usual stuff including Meadow Buntings, Green Pheasants, Zitting Cisticolas and Eurasian Skylarks were also very active. The Northern Hawk-Cuckoo was heard once but I couldn't manage to locate the bird. Additionally, there were several Eurasian Cuckoos which were aggressively calling all day long. Too bad, they were all super shy, as expected, and I couldn't get any closer than 30-40m to any of them. As a result, these shots are quite heavily cropped as you might notice. At least, it is my very first time photographing this often heard but rarely seen species, so I'm somewhat satisfied with these shots for now.

Eurasian Cuckoo calling

Interesting to see the bare patch while calling


Often cocked up its tail while calling

They always held the wings up for a while after landing.



These 2 males were very aggressively chasing each other.

Showing the completely barred underwing coverts different from those of the Oriental Cuckoo.

6 comments:

  1. Nice pics. Common and Oriental Cucloos are both very common up here, Little Cuckoo less so (but still present). I've only ever seen 1 Hawk Cuckoo and that was about 10 years ago...........

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  2. Great pics, especially the birds in flight ! I just spent 2 days at Miyakejima where the only cuckoo on the shelf was... lesser cuckoo (but heaps of them!).

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  3. Great series of this bird, Ayuwat. I can't get any decent cuckoo pictures. Love the backgrounds and the flight shots. Very cool.

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  4. Useful reference cuckoo shots, Ayuwat ! And I like my cuckoos to call, it makes ID so much easier....

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  5. The Oriental Cuckoo is near impossible to approach here. Good effort, Ayuwat!

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