Donal Hickey: We'll hear cuckoos any day now — or have you already?

Satellite-tracked cuckoos should be coming 'home' from Africa very soon

Cuckoo. Picture: Alan McFadyen/ BTO.org

Any day now, satellite-tracked cuckoos, which left here last summer for their wintering grounds in Africa, should be returning.

The project is being undertaken by our National Parks and Wildlife Service (NPWS) and the British Trust for Ornithology (BTO) to learn of the migration patterns of this fascinating bird and where exactly it spends the winter months. Innate navigational abilities of migrating birds, about which we are discovering more all the time, are truly awesome.