Losing a Familiar Call

LAST YEAR, in May, I heard a cuckoo call but once, a sad reminder that this bird, for so long considered the herald of spring, has sadly declined in recent years, so much so that the cuckoo is now on the Red List of endangered species; since the 1980s the population of this once so common bird has declined by around 65 per cent.

- Tony Jackson 

There was a time, not so long ago, when the repetitive calling of the cuckoo in late April and early May was a welcome and commonplace sign that summer was on the doorstep and all was well with the world.

How times have changed! My copy of The Birds of Devon (by D’Urban and Mathew 1892) notes that in some years, notably 1873 and 1881 “it is very numerous, usually arriving in southern Devon in the third or fourth week of April…in the extreme west of Somerset the 16th April goes by the name of ‘Cuckoo’s Day’, it being the date when the cry of the cuckoo may first be expected”. Those were indeed the days and certainly, in the 1960s and ’70s the call of the springtime cuckoo, and occasional sightings of the bird, was commonplace.