Cuckoos and gale force SW wind (no link!)

I hope there are more cuckoos around but as one who has been watching out for and listening for cuckoos on Castlemartin peninsula and comparing notes with local Range watcher (Peter Hughes) over most of the last 25 years I am not yet convinced.

When we had cuckoos regularly breeding here they usually turned up in late April and could regularly be heard calling for a few weeks at least. More over you could often find them perched on fences hunting and feeding on Drinker or Oak Eggar moth caterpillars in the same locations over the same period and so I was pretty confident they were occupying summer territories.

Female bubbly-gargling calls would be particularly noticeable from around mid May onwards and well into June when male calls were much less obvious (remember part of the well known saying "in June he changes his tune" referring to the female calls?).

However, I would say that territorial and probable breeding cuckoos have been very scarce on the peninsula over at least the last 4-6 years. This year's pattern was much the same. Occasional late April/early May male cuckoo song, but nothing regular and no real evidence of any territories being properly established/occupied. Despite searches, they appeared to be mostly absent in most of May until the unexpected spread of late male calls for a brief period in early June.

The interesting thing was that this period of activity did coincide with the arrival of a few southerly/easterly migrants (including hobby at Stackpole), but of course they could have been returning males. They had apparently stopped calling regularly at Llangloffan by the end of May, so perhaps they continue to call when moving south?

If there has been an increase in cuckoo numbers in north Pembs, then hopefully we will see a recovery in the south. If they have had a good year then we should hopefully find some migrating juvs perched on fences in and around July/August. But comparison between the 1984-88 South Pembs Atlas data and 2003-07 data for the same area in MapMate is pretty striking!

Please ensure that all sightings are added to the National Atlas www.bto.org/birdatlas

This evenings SW gale has produced some pretty spectacular seas and sights at Elegug Stacks - hundreds of guillemots flying high in the air over the stacks and even occasionally almost over the car park! Waves/spray crashing over headlands like Mewsford Point - could be bad for the seabirds and for some fledgling choughs along here! Many gannets were being driven close inshore and many thousands of Manx shearwaters were going west close in to the cliffs. Must be the possibility of a "good seabird" blown up from the south? Too wet for me to hang around there for long - I got soaked!