Anja Murray: Cuckoos and climate change

Judging by the data yielded by the satellite tracking project, summer droughts in southern Europe, the result of accelerating climate change, have been having a major impact on cuckoo survival

One of Ireland’s natural mysteries may soon be solved as the National Parks and Wildlife Service (NPWS) has commenced a cross-channel Cuckoo tracking project with the British Trust for Ornithology (BTO) to find out just where Irish cuckoos spend their winter months. It is hoped the project will also answer if Irish cuckoos undertake a different migration strategy. Pictures: Valerie O’Sullivan

Cuckoos calling out each May, echoing across low hills and rough fields, is an enchanting sound. To many of us, it is an uplifting soundtrack to the early summer — though one of my neighbours is less impressed when the local cuckoo decides to call out all night long.

Because there is insufficient food for them in urban or suburban areas, or in intensively managed farmland, cuckoos breeding range is predominantly in ‘rough’ areas such as rough pasture, species-rich meadows, scrubby woodlands, and heathy uplands, places where there is sufficient diversity of vegetation to support an abundance of the moth caterpillars that sustain them.