Donal Hickey: Will climate change alter the arrival of the cuckoo

Tracking their migration can help answer questions like the effects of recent weather on wildlife

The cuckoo was first heard in Buttevant, Co Cork, on March 16, 2020, a month earlier than in Co Mayo, in 2021.

Every day, we see signs of the changing climate. Four years ago, on January 1, the Botanical Society of Britain and Ireland found 239 species flowering in the wild from counties Cork to Donegal, about 10 times more than 30 or 40 years previously.

All of which makes the study of phenology (the timing of annual cycles of plants and animals, as when a plant flowers, goes to seed and insects emerge from hibernation) extremely relevant.