Cuckoos Galore! — Birds on the Brink

Back in early April, at the start of Lockdown, I wrote a Birds on the Brink blog entitled ‘On hearing the last Cuckoo in Spring?’ lamenting the fact that Cuckoo numbers in the UK are in tragic decline. Their decline remains a sad and true fact but, at the local level at least, I have had cause to think that things may not be entirely hopeless.

At the start of May this year, a male Cuckoo took up temporary ‘residence’ in my garden for the best part of three weeks; during the first week or so he sang night and day, occasionally ‘getting lucky’ and attracting a bubbling female. Thereafter he began to wander up to a mile in any direction but always returned to my garden at dusk, my best guess being that he roosted in the cover of a dense oak tree. Rested rather than roosted might be a better way of putting it because by the beginning of June the hours of darkness were meagre.

‘My’ Hampshire Cuckoo, about to land on his favourite song perch. ©Paul Sterry/Nature Photographers Ltd.

My Cuckoo – I like to think of him as mine – attracted interest from residents in the village where I live and other people began noticing calling Cuckoos near their homes. An impromptu phone network allowed us to establish that there were up to five males calling at any one time in the surroundings of a small village in north Hampshire. Not bad, since it must be three years since I had previously heard one in the immediate vicinity of where I live.

I asked Paul Stancliffe from the British Trust for Ornithology if he could shed any light on the Cuckoo’s seeming good fortunes in my part of the world – the BTO have been radio-tracking Cuckoos for several years now and have some great information on the species. He told me that last autumn BTO data told them that Cuckoos returning to their wintering grounds in West Africa had fared well: seemingly unimpaired by adverse weather, their survival rate had been excellent. Paul also told me that it appeared that migration this spring had not been hampered by adverse weather either, at least when it came to western European populations: their return migration across North Africa and southern Europe had been equally successful, on the basis of BTO data relating to radio-tracked birds.

Next April I will be listening out keenly for the return of a Cuckoo to my garden. Some would say that is a forlorn hope but time will tell whether my grounds for cautious optimism are founded.

Paul Sterry.

In my neck of the woods, the Dunnock is the most likely host for nest-parasitic Cuckoos. Elsewhere, with other host species such as Reed Warblers, Cuckoos at least make an attempt to mimic the eggs of their benefactors. Not so with Dunnocks as can b… — In my neck of the woods, the Dunnock is the most likely host for nest-parasitic Cuckoos. Elsewhere, with other host species such as Reed Warblers, Cuckoos at least make an attempt to mimic the eggs of their benefactors. Not so with Dunnocks as can be seen in this photo, which shows a Dunnock’s egg on the left and a Cuckoo egg laid in the same nest on the right.