Early one morning at the start of June I decided to go and try to get some photos of the Cuckoo. I reached out to the Irish Photo hides and made a booking for myself to go and try and get some shots of the cuckoo. The setup was the same as last year and overall I got lucky with the weather on the day. I got up at 04:30, leaving home at 05:00 and I arrived on site at 6 30 at the pre-defined location. After meeting with the rest of the group, we jumped into Richard's Jeep and headed down to the hide to walk a couple of hundred meters into the Cuckoo hide. The cuckoo was waiting for us as we arrived and flew off before the mealworm was put out. The morning was nice and bright and sunny and overall we had a good day ahead.

The cuckoo was used to the people and the hides and the lenses moving. Overall, you still need to not make noise or sudden movements within the hide, but generally it was pretty relaxed. There were lots of Jays around and they were running the cuckoo every now and again and stealing all of the food from the perches. There were also swallows about and we even saw some deer on the hill. The cuckoo came in and out a number of times in the next hour and a half and we got some great shots with some nice morning light. Then we packed everything back up around 8.30 and headed back to the cars and decided what to do for the rest of the day. Me personally, I was going to go to the lime kiln hide and see if I could see the buzzard and pine martin. The rest of the group were heading to the Kestrel Hide.

There are gimbal plates in the hides, so there's no need for a tripod, but you can bring one. But just note that space is limited, so either a bean bag, handhold, or just bring a gimbal head and mount your lens depending on the size of it. For myself I was using a 600mm prime lens and it was good but I would say something with a bit more adaptability if you are looking to do in-flight shots or tracking shots so something in the range of 100 to 500 or maybe 200 600 might be a better fit within the hide.