Been a long time

It's been along time since I posted anything on the blog. I was bored with our English summer (cough) so decided to head down to Tarifa in Spain to watch some migration in the sunshine.

Back to Druridge on Saturday. Janet was doing a ringing demo for an NWT group, I got the job of extracting the tit flock from the nets before going to work. I didn't even get to ring anything. Any ringer will tell you that blue tits are the most vicious of birds and will quickly find any wound on your hands to have a go at!

I also managed to call in briefly on the way home from work on Saturday afternoon. Martin Kitchen had reported black-throated divers and a minke whale in the bay earlier in the day so I thought a quick look on the sea might be useful. A few red-throats and decent scoter flock of 230+ birds kept me busy, there were also a handful of teal and wigeon in with them.

The highlight of the day came when I was walking back through the dunes and a blokes springer spaniels flushed a bird from the bushes in front of me. Merlin was my initial reaction, until I got the bins on it and saw it was a cuckoo!

phone-scoped cuckoo

It landed some way off on a bush, where it sat long enough for me to get some crappy phone-scoped shots. I was thinking it was very late for a cuckoo, thoughts of oriental cuckoo came to mind, but I couldn't turn it into anything other than a very late common cuckoo.