Cuckoo

[oldwoodcutter]

Same here, very scarce. When i was a young man a cuckoo settled into a tree that i was standing under and started to sing,a sight and sound that i will never forget.Talk about being in the right place at the right time.

[openspaceman]

Same here, very scarce. When i was a young man a cuckoo settled into a tree that i was standing under and started to sing,a sight and sound that i will never forget.Talk about being in the right place at the right time.

 

Heard my first today whilst walking the dog on Pirbright common, in a birch tree just 200 metres from a squad of army blokes firing on the 400 metre range.

 

I think one of the reasons for the decline is loss of target species to parasitise. A major host was the willow warbler and they have declined sharply.

 

A quirk of cuckoo breeding is that whilst a male will breed with any female cuckoo the female will only lay eggs in the nest of a host species she hatched from, presumably because she has evolved to only lay eggs that mimic this host bird.

[peatff]

I remember when I was a young lad my dad was a keen ornithologist and used to go out bird nesting. He took me to see a Reed Warbler nest he had found which had a Cuckoo egg in it. Apparently they are popular with Cuckoos.

[openspaceman]

I remember when I was a young lad my dad was a keen ornithologist and used to go out bird nesting. He took me to see a Reed Warbler nest he had found which had a Cuckoo egg in it. Apparently they are popular with Cuckoos.

 

You are right and I probably mis remembered willow warbler instead of reed warbler, BTO have a webpage that says "The main hosts in the UK are the Dunnock, Meadow Pipit, Pied Wagtail and Reed Warbler. "

 

Cuckoo decline | BTO - British Trust for Ornithology

 

I cannot remember seeing a reed warbler but a lot of these little brown birds are hard to identify. I don't see as many dunnocks as a few years back but pied wagtails are plentiful here and lots of meadow pipits in the uplands but less so in Surrey. Do skylarks and meadow pipits occur together or do they compete?

[Stubby]

We have Dunnocks a plenty . I did not realise the female will only lay in the species it grew up in . Intersting .