I actually RAN for this Cuckoo!!! And bugger was it worth it...

I did my usual 6 til 7:30am stint at Black Hole Marsh but the best of the early morning birding was this Dunlin which was rather close. It was still dark and I had to shoot at annoyingly high ISO but could just about get away with it as it was close:

I 'felt' as though there was something good to shoot on patch so I booked the afternoon off work. This proved to be a rather good decision. I spent most of my afternoon at Black Hole Marsh and the Wood Sand showed relatively well (still pretty distant but closer than it has been lately):

And now the part that the title of this post mentions... When I arrived at Black Hole Marsh for the first time this afternoon I was informed that the Cuckoo had been showing well in front of Island Hide and that I had missed it by a matter of minutes. AGAIN. So when I spotted it in front of Stafford Marsh at around 5pm I mentioned it to Sue so that she could come and get some snaps of it too, and then I ran. Yes, RAN; not easy with a near 10kg camera set up! I was determined to get close enough for a pic as all the other keen birders had already managed to get decent views of it (the majority of which have been whilst I was at work and couldn't twitch it). I had nice views of it on the lines outside of the FSB/Hide; it was pretty distant to be fair, perhaps 50 ish metres. However, the light was PERFECT so I managed to get these pics (all heavily cropped but the decent light allows this):

Such a shame this one isn't sharp!!

BRILLIANT! Patch tick and even UK tick. Afternoon of holiday well spent? I think so...