Wordsworth’s ‘darling’ cuckoo is really a villain
Knock on wood! That is exactly what the male great spotted woodpecker has been doing and furthermore, it has paid off - a female has now joined him.
Regular readers will recall that his mate of the last few years was taken by a sparrowhawk last year but as spring has progressed, his constant hammering out of the message that he is available has earned a response. I therefore expect that as the year continues, we will once again be entertained by redcaps – young woodpeckers.
Let us hope that a sparrowhawk does not intervene again. As previously explained, we are visited by two families of woodpeckers and I assume that the new female is the offspring of the other pair which do not reside here in the garden but which fly in from a nearby woodland where presumably they are domiciled. They have also been increasing their visits to the feeding delights we offer - fat balls and peanuts.
The knocking on wood is the woodpecker’s version of sweet music, a resonant message that is a pronouncement that he is available and that he is claiming a territory in my orchard. Indeed, his message is loud and clear, as clear as the vocal message pronounced by a very loud wren also in the orchard and the sweet sound of a willow warbler that has set up home there. The world is buzzing with declarations and invitations as the birds prepare themselves for another breeding season.
The same message emanates from the throat of a cuckoo. That comic ‘cuc-koo’ call may defy the description of a song but that is exactly what it is, as much as the loud message of the wren or the silvery cadence of the willow warbler or indeed the rat-a-tat message of the woodpecker. Cuckoos are one of those birds which are suffering a serious decline but May is their time in this part of the world. They have travelled from Central Africa, which is where they winter, usually arriving here as May is blooming.
However, one has broken all known records by flying from its distant wintering ground to somewhere in Suffolk in a matter of just seven days.
Normally it is calculated that a cuckoo takes between two and three weeks to make that journey but this one, having taking advantage of following winds, is now a record breaker, its progress logged as the result of a tag that was fitted to it last year. The route, which takes it through Liberia and the Ivory Coast, carried it a distance of 4677 miles which, in this case, was an astonishing daily mileage of nearly 700 miles a day!
The poets regularly regarded the cuckoo as the harbinger of spring and there are countless verses romanticising it. William Wordsworth, in particular, wrote many epic verses on the subject, for example:
Darling of the Spring: No bird, but an invisible thing –
A voice, a mystery.
And further:
The cuckoo’s sovereign cry
Fills all the hollows of the sky.
And yet everyone knows the cuckoo to be something of a villain, laying its eggs in the nests of other birds and paying no heed whatsoever to the nurturing of its young. When compared with the utter dedication of other birds in the rearing of their young, the cuckoo surely does not deserve Wordsworth’s accolade of ‘darling’.
Throughout Europe, more than 100 different species of bird have been found to have been host to cuckoo eggs. However, the choice is more limited in each country. In Britain for instance, the hosts are generally limited to reed warblers, meadow pipits – the commonest host in Scotland – the dunnock and the robin.
Furthermore, the female cuckoo, which of course makes the choice of nests in which to lay her eggs, generally seeks out the same species as she herself was reared by as a youngster. The male – he of the curious voice – has absolutely no say in the matter!
Thus once she has established herself after that long migratory journey, she will explore her territory for the nests of the birds she will use as hosts for her own eggs, noting the progress of her would-be foster parents so that she can select the right time when to deposit a single egg in each nest of her choice.
The cuckoo egg hatches before those of the host and the young cuckoo instinctively begins a further ‘dastardly’ action in tipping out the eggs of the host bird. The young cuckoo manoeuvres the eggs on to its hollowed out back and tips them overboard. Even the chicks, that manage to hatch are also tipped out in the same way.
The cuckoo is something of a figure of hate to many small birds and they will often mob a cuckoo when it flies nearby, at which point the cuckoo takes advantage of the situation and lays her egg in the now vacant nest.
The cuckoo has a further distraction up its wing in that its egg resembles that of the chosen host bird. In addition, the young cuckoo, now the only youngster in the nest, accordingly gets all the food brought by the host parents and grows and grows – like Topsy!
I have often seen the spectacle of a huge young cuckoo, being fed by a minuscule foster parent with the foster parent perching on the youngster’s back in order to stuff caterpillars into the open gape of the young cuckoo’s mouth!
I have a clear memory of watching a starling, its beak full of wriggling insect life, hurtling towards the nest full of its own young, being almost hypnotised by the sight of a young cuckoo with its beak gaping open.
The interior of young birds’ mouths is brightly coloured in order to encourage the parents to keep pushing food into it.
The cuckoo’s mouth is particularly garish and on this occasion the starling was so drawn by that gape that it diverted from its original course and stuffed the food into the mouth of the young cuckoo.
Therefore, cuckoos are, to many small birds, not unlike coronavirus is to we humans – a deadly threat! Due to the regulations which now exist due to the virus, many of the usual activities at this time of the year, such as travel, are absolutely off the agenda. Travel, however, is very much on the cuckoo’s agenda for as soon as their dastardly deeds are done, they simply turn round and begin their 4500-mile return journey to Central Africa.
They certainly don’t wait to see if their progeny, reared by others, survive because they’ll be gone by the end of July.
Indeed, very much not the darling birds referred to by Wordsworth!