Cuckoos come calling
2 Comments »5th September, 2008; Category: Cuckoos
A few days ago I mentioned that we haven’t yet seen or heard any cuckoos this spring. That should be about to change.
This morning I think I heard the plaintive call of a Horsfields Bronze-cuckoo before breakfast – my breakfast – not that of the cuckoo. Not sure if he/she had already eaten. It could have been a Common Starling imitating said cuckoo, of course. I’ve been fooled by the starlings many times before.
A little later in the morning we left for our lectures in Adelaide. We had just entered the South Eastern Freeway when a grey bird flew across the road in front of us. It looked for all the world like a Pallid Cuckoo, but travelling at 100kph (my car – not the bird) I couldn’t be 100% sure.
Pallid Cuckoo, Round Hill Nature Reserve
So do you call that ‘speed birding’ or ‘drive by birding’? 🙂
I’d call it dangerous – or ‘why don’t you keep your eyes on the road?’
Isn’t it amazing how the best birds are often seen while driving along at speed. When my children were growing up they were quite used to the sound of ‘oooo – ooooo- ooo’ and the brakes being applied as we’d come to a screeching halt in a cloud of dust – only to find it was a common or garden variety of bird.
And they still have nightmares about a truck or some other unbendable object ploughing into the back of us.