Common Cuckoo
Cuculus canorus
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Everyone knows the call; far fewer have seen the bird, and fewer still after early July.
A slim, long-tailed, grey bird with barred underparts and pointed wings, easily mistaken in flight for a sparrowhawk — a resemblance that may help it approach nests unchallenged. Cuckoos arrive in late April and are birds of open country: moorland edge, rough grazing and reedbed rather than gardens. They have declined steeply in Britain, though Scotland has held up better than England.
Behaviour
The female lays a single egg in the nest of a host — usually meadow pipit on the Galloway moors, or reed warbler and dunnock elsewhere — timed to match that host's own laying, and often mimicking its egg colour. The cuckoo chick hatches first and heaves the host's eggs over the side, then is fed by foster parents a fraction of its size. Adults leave for Africa remarkably early, many by the end of June.
Migration
Satellite tagging has transformed what is known about this: British cuckoos cross the Sahara to the Congo rainforest, and adults depart in June and early July, months before the young they never meet make the same journey unguided on instinct alone.
When to see it
Quick facts
- Family
- Cuckoos (Cuculidae)
- Size
- 32–34 cm · about the size of a small pigeon
- UK status
- Red-listed
Photo by Andy Morffew from Itchen Abbas, Hampshire, UK, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons