Christine's walking & birds blog

Greger's cuckoo

The first thing I did this morning was to try out (not very successfully, I fear) some 1001 carpet shampoo in a corner of the hall. Hands up who remembers this jingle:

"One thousand and one cleans a big, big carpet, for less than half a crown!"

Well, given that you have to whisk the stuff into foam and then apply it by hand with a cloth, I should hope it would be cheap! And I intended to clean whole rooms like this. There must be an easier way.

Next we indulged in some sunbathing in the garden. It proved too hot for us, and as we moved indoors, Greger suddenly said "Oh, I forgot to tell you; on my walk yesterday I saw an interesting bird." He said it flew across from trees lining a stream and then flew back out of sight, and a bit later it was on the path in front of him. He had no binoculars but had fairly close if fleeting views. It appeared to have smooth brown upperparts and was rather falcon-like in shape, and he was pretty sure it was a cuckoo.

We drove along the river from Maidenhead Bridge and parked in Lower Cookham Road at a pull-in, and then made our way across sun-baked fields on the edge of Widbrook Common back towards Maidenhead. As we approached the spot Greger had pointed out, he got onto the bird again as it winged swiftly over the tree-tops and out of sight.

We saw the bird once more as it flew out from the trees, and this time I saw where it had landed. It did look dark brown in flight but seemed greyer in the tree with some brown barring. Anyway, it was certainly a cuckoo, and probably a juvenile. It was very wary, but Greger got this photo.