A bird with a special place in Irish folklore
Cuckoos, about the size of a dove, have a grey head with a thin, bright yellow ring around their eye, yellow feet and a black beak.
- by William Wordsworth
When the swallows arrive in spring, we encounter something tangible; we get close to them and get to enjoy their initial twittering as they frequent age-old nesting places. We see them in their goings on and so the mysteries of their lives are easy enough to figure out. The cuckoo, however, who also heralds the arrival of longer days, is much more secretive about the business of summer.
In the Ox Mountains, while the call of the cuckoo is one of our most familiar spring sounds, we know very little about what it does and how it goes about doing it. If we dig a little deeper, we soon see that the cuckoo has instincts attached to its survival that make it appear cunning and calculating at best and almost cruel at worst. Just as well the cuckoo has an endearing call.
Cuckoos, about the size of a dove, have a grey head with a thin, bright yellow ring around their eye, yellow feet and a black beak. They have dark grey plumage on their upper parts and barred plumage below which resembles the markings of the sparrowhawk. Some females are a rusty-brown colour.
In flight, the cuckoo looks very similar to a sparrowhawk which gave rise to an old theory that the cuckoo transformed into a hawk in winter.
The cuckoo arrives among us in April onwards but they do not spend long here, with many having flown south to Africa by the end of June. The old people said that the cuckoo leaves at the first sight of a cock of hay.
In ancient times, and indeed right up until the 18th century, people came up with all sorts of fantastical theories to explain why certain birds disappeared in winter. It was a reasonable question given people’s limited concept of climate and the wider world. Some of the theories put forward seemed reasonable enough, among them were that some birds simply changed into other birds who wintered here. Swallows were thought to bury themselves in mud to survive the winter while other birds were thought to have simply flown to the moon.
The cuckoo doesn’t build its own nest or rear its own young. Instead, the female lays her eggs in the nests of other birds. The unfortunate foster mother then spends her summer feeding a ravenous cuckoo chick to the detriment of her own brood. This trick of nature is known as Brood Parasitism. Certain birds only reproduce in this unique way and, of course, the best-known example of this is the cuckoo.
Woodland Trust explains that cuckoos court multiple mates during the mating period in April.
One reason for the cuckoo egg's hatching sooner is that the female cuckoo holds it in her oviduct prior to laying. This means that the egg has already been partially incubated by the time it is laid, giving it a head start on the host bird’s eggs. When hatched, the chick encourages the host to keep pace with its high growth rate with its rapid begging call and the chick's open mouth which serves as a sign stimulus. When fully reared, the young cuckoo eventually flies to Africa a few weeks after their parents. Another amazing instinctive trick of nature given they had no parental involvement at any stage up to this point.
The cuckoo holds a special place in Irish folklore, serving as a weather forecaster, a predictor of farming fortunes, and bearer of good and bad luck. According to tradition, the luckiest date on which to hear the cuckoo for the first time is April 28th. Irish Heritage News has some interesting information in this regard.
Another well-known cuckoo saying in Ireland seems to caution against staying up late at night: 'Cuckoo oats and woodcock hay, up all night and down all day.' However, a similar rhyme, known in Scotland, was recorded by James Hardy in 1879: 'Cuckoo oats and woodcock hay, make a farmer run away.' This, Hardy explained, means that if adverse weather in spring prevents the sowing of oats until the cuckoo is heard or if heavy autumn rains prevent the gathering of the last of the hay until after the arrival of the woodcock, both circumstances will lead to substantial losses for the farmer. It may also warn against laziness and delaying tasks. Even today, in some parts of Ireland, a farmer who postpones sowing his crops might be labelled a 'cuckoo farmer'.
Kathleen Moore, from Carrowcanada near Swinford, writing in the National Folklore Collection in 1938, has left us some local cuckoo folklore to muse over.
(The Schools’ Collection, Volume 0123C, Page 46, National Folklore Collection, UCD).
The dwindling number of cuckoos visiting Ireland in recent times highlights the urgent need to conserve these unique birds. The National Parks and Wildlife Service (NPWS) has reported a substantial decline in the cuckoo population across Ireland, with breeding numbers down almost 30% over the past half century.
Thankfully, efforts are being made to retain the call of the cuckoo. Last May, the cross-channel Cuckoo Tracking Project, conducted by the NPWS and the British Trust for Ornithology, satellite-tagged three cuckoos in Killarney National Park in Co Kerry. This collaborative effort aims to determine the factors contributing to the decline in the cuckoo population by closely monitoring migration patterns. By the autumn, the three Killarney cuckoos had made it to Central Africa - proof, if proof is still needed, that the cuckoo doesn’t really go to the moon for winter after all.
If we saw a bird like our Ox Mountain cuckoo, with the same instincts and clever reproductive abilities described on David Attenborough’s , we would be fascinated, and rightly so. Keep an ear out for the cuckoo this spring and let's hope it will remain a familiar sound of spring.
