Kitchen Garden Forum

Heard the first cuckoo yesterday - right out in the Dorset countryside.

Anyone else heard one yet?

Hi Diane,
I was in Dorset over the weekend and visited the
Sub-tropical Gardens at Abbotsbury and really enjoyed it. How could I have produced plants for 33 years and then virtually find a collection of plants that I know nothing about! Caged Kookaburra's but no Cuckoo!
JB.

I heard my first Cuckoo two days ago on Dartmoor. I’m sad to say it’s the first one I’ve heard for a few years. Does anyone know why they are declining?

Sadly haven't heard our regular visiting cuckoo for several years now. I've heard they always return to the same area and I reckon our visitor has now sadly lived out its lifespan and died, and any youngsters it might have reared have the same incompetent map-reading abilities as I have.

Still listening - 7 years now

I heard one about two weeks ago now, when I was in Ambridge!
DW said she heard one near here yesterday.

John

Theres a cuckoo that starts singing about five o'clock in the morning, in the field directly behind our house.
There was also a Woopecker hammering very close at the weekend, but to my dismay it has had the front off of next doors birdbox and the Bluetit chicks have gone.

OH, I know it's too late for this year's poor baby bluetits, but if you put a metal disk round the titbox entrance for next year, it MAY deter the woodpecker. Unfortunately, sometimes they just attack the box in other places! We have a number of Schwegler boxes, made from woodcrete (I think, concrete with sawdust) and, though they are expensive (around £15 the cheapest), woodpeckers can't peck through them and they also last much longer than wooden ones.

Dear Monika, thankyou very much for the good advice.