Clever ways to clock a cuckoo
Everyone knows the song of the cuckoo. Those characteristic two notes not only give rise to its English name but also similar ones across Europe.
In France, it is known as “coucou” while the Germans and Dutch call them the “kuckuck” and “koekoek”, respectively.
Rippling across heaths, meadows and through forest dells, the song has inspired musicians, poets and even clockmakers of Switzerland to harmonise their creativity to the bird’s even, repetitive beat.
But listen carefully on a calm summer’s morning and it’s likely you will hear a cuckoo making a wholly different sound to the song we know and love.
Walking around a sedge-fringed marsh earlier this month, I heard a bird sound that I had to recalibrate my senses to recall. No matter how often I hear the sweet, rippling notes, I have to remind myself I am listening to a female cuckoo on the prowl rather than some territorial bird of prey.
Female cuckoos mimic the calls of birds of prey as part of their strategy to confuse host species such as reed warblers and meadow pipits, so they can commandeer nests to lay their eggs.
Recordings of a female’s “bubbling” call is also used by researchers at the British Trust for Ornithology in order to lure male cuckoos so they can be trapped and fitted with satellite trackers.
Researchers have opened a whole new dimension of our understanding of the life of cuckoos by tracing them on incredible journeys from English breeding grounds into tropical Africa.
One tagged bird called PJ returned this April, completing his sixth tracked migration between the Congo Basin and Suffolk.
By rights, PJ, who at around the age of seven is one of the oldest cuckoos ever recorded, should have been heading south this month. But sadly, it has been announced that he has come to his journey’s end, after a lifetime migration cycle of more than 60,000 miles.
It is hoped that PJ’S progeny are continuing with their travels to provide scientists with more insight into these fascinating birds.
Females mimic calls of birds of prey to confuse reed warblers