In less than a dozen moments

Fortunately unlike these runners we found somewhere to shelter whilst it passed over.

The runners were not the only ones who were caught out. This bird landed on the telegraph wires soon after the rain had passed, clearly hoping it would dry itself out. A quick glance and we thought a bedraggled pigeon, but as I was taking my first photograph we realised its bedraggled state could not possibly explain its tail shape.

You’ve probably worked it out already. It took us another photograph. My excuse is quite a good one though, this was a first for me. First ever, not just in Portugal. They are a difficult bird to see, so we were very lucky and I guess we can thank the rainstorm for the sighting. It is of course a cuckoo. Their Portuguese name is Cuco-canoro.

Hope you have a lovely weekend and if it does rain I’ll keep my fingers crossed for you that it passes over in a moment! However if that doesn’t work and it rains for more moments then you can count, why not spend some time with Cate and her Six Word Saturday gang.

BUT before you go here is the Cuckoo’s song, borrowed from the excellent xeno-canto website. This recording is by Marco Dragonetti and was recorded by the Osa river, Orbetello, Italy.

PS A moment was a medieval unit of time. There were 40 moments in a solar hour, however as a solar hour was always one twelfth of the amount of time between sunrise and sunset, the length of a moment would vary through the year. On average though a moment was 90 seconds, and the time-gap between the heavy downpour and brilliant sunshine was less than a dozen moments!