Chasing cuckoos

 On the 19th April I decided to both have some exercise and see some more birds. Specifically, I wanted to see the great spotted cuckoo, which I had never seen before. I knew a good place where to look for it, and so set out. On the way, I cycled past a river and immediately heard a cuckoo calling. It took me some time to locate it, but I was amazed by how close it was when I did. I managed to get even closer soon afterwards as it sat on the top of its tree, completely oblivious to my presence. I pulled off a great series of pictures. 

As I got underway again, I stopped just short of a roundabout because I saw something else. Over the past day, I heard that some people had seen a roller but not photographed it, and others went looking but turned up empty handed. So I intended to be the first in both regards and wasn't about to leave when I remembered. And this was a bit unfair on them, because this roller was just sitting out in the open in full view of the road, as if waiting for me to cycle past. 

After contenting myself with a glimpse, I cycled on to the southern El Hondo hides, and found that they have been taken over by skeeters. There was a cloud of mosquitoes milling around inside, and even more clustered to the walls. They didn't bother me, though. My next destination was the Ermita de San Francisco, a ruined church nearby where last summer I had observed a roller perched together with a hoopoe. I arrived, but didn't find anything aside from beautiful bee-eaters. 

Time was running out and I didn't see any great spotted cuckoos yet. A cuckoo was calling in the distance, but it was the common variety, the one which I had already seen today. So I, increasingly feeling hot and time-pressured, started lunging at any bird I could see which was the outline of a cuckoo. But every bird I investigated turned out either a shrike or a bee-eater. I slowly began to cycle back, but on the way became distracted by more birds, all of which turned out to be bee-eaters. I decided to explore this road a bit more, saying to myself if I didn't see anything past here I would leave. And just as I was about to leave, a great spotted cuckoo flew right past me at exceptionally close range, and into a bush nearby! It then flew out into a much smaller bush, and I began taking pictures. The birds were extremely close, and didn't seem to mind my presence as they sat around in the bush. I noticed it was a pair quite soon after I spotted the first cuckoo. But then, my camera ran out of space, and I had to be constantly deleting and re-taking pictures. The cuckoos almost seemed to wait for me to take good pictures, sitting in the bush and infrequently flying from branch to branch. And eventually I took two which satisfied me. 

I was not expecting to get a photo that good, and so left after I took that image, hoping no-one would disturb these birds as they were so close to this road.