I ’ve had a battering past few weeks, shooting back-to-back trips with very early mornings – but even so, a good friend and I have taken the drive south in the wee hours to see a bird I’ve been meaning to catch up with for a while. He’s become a bit of a celebrity in the birding world, and is probably one of the most photographed of its kind anywhere on the planet – but I was still rather excited to make some images of a wonderful, stripy migrant who’s returned for his truly impressive ninth year!
Everyone knows the sound of the cuckoo: that familiar confirmation of the spring. Often vilified for their parasitic breeding strategy, cuckoos have an amazing life cycle, migrating thousands of miles each year, travelling from their wintering grounds in north Africa to our shores to mate. Once they’re here, it’s all about reproduction, the males calling to attract females for breeding before allowing them to go off and look for adoptive parents for their greedy offspring, who have a real inability to share…