Dorothy and Margaret also commented that Cuckoos were much less commonly recorded in recent years and they thought arrival dates were getting later. Once they had a dunnock's nest occupied by a cuckoo nestling in their garden hedge. Note the only March date is in 1920.

Andrew Fraser collected much information about the distribution of cuckoo records in Worcestershire in 2001. We await the analysis with interest. He comments that it's the first year he has not heard a cuckoo.

Table 2. Records according to date of month. Conclusion is that cuckoos generally return in April, and that some dates are very unpopular! I suspect these latter anomalies arise from the daily activities of the recorders rather than the cuckoos' real dislike for certain arrival dates!

Table 1: Dates of first Cuckoo heard each year at Holly Dene, Moorgate Road, Stoke Prior, Bromsgrove, Worcestershire, B60 4AW (grid ref SO 955658) by the Honeybourne family