7.4.05
Great Spotted Cuckoo
6 April 2005
Conspicuously trotting over the short mown golf course green at Brooklands (east Worthing) the Great Spotted Cuckoo,
Clamator glandarius, seemed unaware of its audience of birdwatchers. Under an overcast sky with a Strong Breeze (Force 6) blowing off the sea from the south-east, the cuckoo could be seen clearly out in the open where it seemed to be pecking at the ground (more like a Pied Wagtail than a Starling) for food.
The Great Spotted Cuckoo spends the winter in Africa and flies north to southern Europe (including Turkey and Spain) to find a bird's (usually a corvid's, especially Magpies') nest to lay a single clandestine egg for the surrogate parent bird to incubate and feed. It is a rare vagrant to southern England with only 39 records in Britain and Ireland up to the end of 1995. One of those was at Shoreham Airport before in 1990.
Adur Nature Notes 2005
Conspicuously trotting over the short mown golf course green at Brooklands (east Worthing) the Great Spotted Cuckoo,
Clamator glandarius, seemed unaware of its audience of birdwatchers. Under an overcast sky with a Strong Breeze (Force 6) blowing off the sea from the south-east, the cuckoo could be seen clearly out in the open where it seemed to be pecking at the ground (more like a Pied Wagtail than a Starling) for food.
The Great Spotted Cuckoo spends the winter in Africa and flies north to southern Europe (including Turkey and Spain) to find a bird's (usually a corvid's, especially Magpies') nest to lay a single clandestine egg for the surrogate parent bird to incubate and feed. It is a rare vagrant to southern England with only 39 records in Britain and Ireland up to the end of 1995. One of those was at Shoreham Airport before in 1990.
Adur Nature Notes 2005
