Bird Spotlights: The Cuckoo

Plumage

The cuckoo has a mainly grey plumage, which makes it quite unobtrusive to mobbing crows when they hide in thick trees. The female is pretty much the same as the male so it’s hard to tell gender.

Diet

A cuckoo usually eats insects, a favorite being hairy caterpillars. It also occasionally eats eggs and chicks. A cuckoo catches insects by hawking but when looking for caterpillars, it will come on the ground to look.

Distribution

Where it is yellow, it visits in summer to breed.

Habitat

The cuckoo’s favorite habitat is open moorland with thick trees and forests nearby. When they breed, this habitat provides large food sources to feed their young.

My Encounters

My first encounter was at Emsworthy Mire. I was sat on a wall, watching a tree where I had heard a cuckoo and that was when I saw him. He was sat there for a moment before leaping onto the ground. My second encounter was at the same place but he did not fly away immediately this time.I was doing the same thing, sat on a wall but watching a different tree from the distance. This time when he came, I got to admire him for longer. Most people have probably heard a cuckoo but have you actually seen one? They are so secretive, I feel very lucky to have seen them twice.

Conservation Status

The cuckoo in Britain has been in a long term decline since the 1980s. The decline was first evident in the 1960s but its seemed to slow until the 1980s. The species has disappeared from many of its former range and is declining all across europe and has since disappeared from Russia and the Baltic states. Reasons for the decline seem to be based in its African wintering grounds as less and less migrate to the UK every year.

Nest Parasitism

A cuckoo is best known for nest parasitism which is when it lays the egg in another nest. When laying, the female cuckoo checks the chosen foster parent has left and then it strikes. It lands in the nest and lays its egg. As the cuckoo grows up, competition with the actual chick heats up and most cuckoo chicks end up pushing the other chick out of the nest!