I was attempting to edge around to the other side of the this bird so I could get a better light angle. And I was doing it. But just after I took this photo, a woman came hiking along chatting loudly on her cell phone. She looked at me, looked toward the bird (I doubt she actually saw what I was looking at) and tramped past. The bird disappeared into the bush and never came back out. Here’s another shot I took of the same bird, further away but in better light.
Cuckoos are fairly large birds, but they can be very hard to see. They’re often deep in trees or bushes and they don’t move around a great deal, although when they do, they seem rather clumsy. In almost 30 years of birding, I’ve never had one allow me to approach within 15 feet, as this one did. And even then, it wasn’t me that scared it off.