A decent Cuckoo shot at last.

After doing some early morning shopping on Tuesday morning I shot over to Brandon Marsh to get some shots of the Nightingale that's been there for a few days now.I'd got my fingers crossed that the path to the Carlton hide was not flooded like it was last Saturday.

Luckily although muddy the path was not flooded and I was able to get to the hide quite easily.Here are a couple of Nightingale shots.

Unfortunately these shots were not taken at Brandon yesterday but some time ago at Little Paxton Pits.When I entered the hide yesterday I was met with the bad news that it had not been heard for a couple of days now and was thought to have moved on.I spent an hour in the hide with two friends but nothing exciting showed so I moved on to the new viewing screens further along the path.

From the screen I got very excited as a large bird was sitting on the Osprey nesting pole but I'm afraid it was a Greylag Goose.After I'd not seen much for 20 minutes I used an old trick that often brings a decent bird out : start eating a sandwich.In this case it was a cheese one and after two bites something landed in the furthest dead tree.It took me a while to ID it because it was not calling out.It was a Cuckoo (I assume it was a female) which annoyingly stayed behind the branches most of the time.Here are my best shots.

My two friends joined me just at the right time because it returned to the same tree having left it a few minutes before.This time it was even harder to get a shot of staying behind all the time behind the branches and when it flew off in the direction of the Newlands there was much cursing.Then something dramatic happened it was as though it had heard our cursing because it suddenly turned round and headed back straight towards us landing on another dead tree but this time much closer.

After some tea in the cafe we walked round to the golf course area were we saw loads of the usual Warblers but the best spot of all was a distant Hobby flying around high in the sky.Too distant for a decent shot but great to see the first one of the year.

Other birds seen included a distant pair of Red-crested Pochards on the main pool, a Common Whitethroat near the sheep field,a Great-crested Grieb with chicks on board and a Jay at the bottom of the cafe path in the brambles.