Cuckoo
Seasonal signifier, trackable trickster
“Have you heard the cuckoo yet?”
The male cuckoo’s repetitive and recognisable song, arriving with the flowering of the lady’s smock and the greening of the hawthorn, established it long ago as a staple of seasonal conversation.
The call is easy to describe, and to imitate, and on a still early morning in late April or May its two notes can travel a long way, over the woodland, grasslands and wetlands that they briefly call home in Britain.
In recent years confusion is perhaps more of a risk than it once was, with the conquest of our rooftops by the collared dove and its three note coo-COO-coo.
This may have contributed to a rise in bogus claims of cuckoo, including in the depths of winter. But if someone tells you they’ve heard a cuckoo at Christmas you are perfectly entitled to reply, “No you didn’t”, and walk away without another word.
Genuine cuckoos spend the winter in Western Africa, and the precise seasonal movements of a few individuals are now tracked by satellite.
Visit the pages of the BTO and you will see, for instance, that ‘PJ’ is heading back north towards Suffolk for his sixth consecutive year, although currently he’s hanging out in the Pyrenees.
Although they have disappeared from many parts of England and Wales, cuckoos can still be heard in places where there are a) enough big hairy caterpillars to eat, and b) plenty of small birds with strong parental instincts to be misdirected.
A female cuckoo might lay up 25 eggs individually in different nests in one season. In wetlands, reed warblers provide the top target, while pied wagtails, dunnocks and meadow pipits are the favoured unfortunates elsewhere.
These birds don’t know how to tell a baby cuckoo when they’re feeding one that’s three times the size of them. I wonder how the first ‘cuck-oo’ of spring sounds to them?
There’s still time to join the final run of the British Birdsong Essentials course. This focuses on equipping you with the skills to recognise more than 25 common resident and summer songbirds, with podcast-style audio lessons, identification support throughout, four group practice / Q&A sessions via Zoom and ongoing access to exclusive online species guides from Birdsong Academy.
There are more details on the Birdsong Academy website or email me if you’d like to know more.
I don’t want the fee to be a barrier. If you’d really like to take part but don’t have the spare funds, do get in touch about a low-cost spot.
~ Charlie