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Up the road or down, sometimes further afield, often not for long, we're out most days.
Up the road or down, sometimes further afield, often not for long, we're out most days.
2 comments:
in the UK cuckoos are declining so rapidly that it's a joy to hear them at all. (They seem to be doing better in Scotland than elsewhere). But I share your mixed feelings, they are parasites and I worry about the warblers in areas where cuckoos do thrive...
Late to reply to this, but in case you come back...
When we came back from our May hols, the garden was a remarkably quiet place suddenly, except for this cuckoo. The blackcap was not singing all day from the gum tree as before, and a number of other warblers I'd not identified seemed absent. the chiffchaff persisted but timidly. These warblers are quite a new population round here, and seem to be to do with the maturing trees we've planted and the general increase in cover and biodiversity.
I hoped it was because they had finished breeding and didn't need to sing as much, but they were still singing elsewhere, and in fact now the cuckoo has petered out ('in the middle of June she'll change her tune, in July she flies away', well, everything's earlier this year...), they seem to be tentatively singing again a bit. So hopefully they were just keeping their heads down and not inviting trouble!
I suppose the presence of a cuckoo is like any other predator, it indicates that the food chain and biodiversity in general is in good shape, but it saddened me anyway.
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