Say goodbye to the cuckoo: British migratory bird populations plunging

By MAX HASTINGS

Cuckoos are almost part of our national DNA, yet a new book reveals Britain’s glorious songbirds are disappearing at an alarming rate This is the season of the year when the natural pageant of the British countryside begins to unfold in a fashion which has enchanted poets and pastoralists since the beginning of time. Shakespeare wrote in The Winter’s Tale about the ‘daffodils that come before the swallow dares’. Ted Hughes exulted in the arrival of the swifts from Africa: ‘They’ve made it again,/ Which means the globe’s still working. The Creation’s/ Still waking refreshed, Our summer’s/ Still all to come.’ Modern environmentalist Michael McCarthy takes up this theme. He waxes lyrical about the annual pilgrimage of 16 million birds, crossing thousands of miles of desert, forest, hills, plains and oceans to breed in Britain. … Although McCarthy writes prose, in a lyrical new book he evokes the spirit of the poets in describing our migratory species. He thrills to the cunning of the cuckoo, deceiving others into rearing its young. His imagination soars at the aerobatics of the swallow, the song of the nightingale, the music of the turtle dove. And then the author delivers his brutal punchline: what if none of them came to us any more? For the past two years, he has been travelling around Britain meeting the country’s finest experts on our favourite species. He has read the surveys, studied the data, talked to the people who know most. His conclusion is uncompromising, and forms the title of his book: Say Goodbye To The Cuckoo. …