Going Cuckoo

I wanted to revisit my weekly Almanac column, and where better to start than the Cuckoo?

Leaving aside the sneezing and wheezing of those afflicted with hay fever, there can be no sound more synonymous with late April than the cuckoo’s call? His two notes, in the interval of a major or minor third, are so melodious and evocative that Beethoven, Handel and Belle & Sebastian have been inspired to write works in honour of this member of the cuculidae family. On reflection Belle & Sebastien’s ‘I’m a Cuckoo’ may have been a metaphor. Regional superstitions abound for the springtime African migrant. In Suffolk hearing one on your right is believed to spell death, in neighbouring (and some may say contrary) Norfolk, its on the left. In flood prone Cambridgeshire, regardless of which ear you hear the call from, it foretells rain. Left, right or damp, the cuckoo is a somewhat sinister creature particularly if you are a smaller bird.

The cuckoo’s steely plumage and barring is remarkably similar to that of a sparrowhawk’s. This, ornithologists believe, is an evolutionary trait, developed to scare and scatter brooding woodland bird species. With the residents spooked, and briefly absent, the hen cuckoo grabs her chance. She lays a solitary egg in the now unguarded host nest and frequently evicts any rightful residents. Hen cuckoos will lay up to 50 eggs in one breeding season, targeting if possible, the nests of dunnocks, reed warblers and meadow pipits. The sight of one of these unwitting and diminutive foster mothers, striving to satiate the ravenous appetite of its bloated ‘offspring’ is an invidious one. This sorry story of house raiding, infanticide and gluttony in June is wholly at odds with the soothing late April “coo, cooing" we humans so love.