The cry of the cuckoo has been ringing out across my street in recent weeks. The “freeloaders” are finally back in town, if a little late.
Although I have never been a fan of cuckoos and the upheaval they sow in the bird world, I found myself – possibly against my better judgment – seeking them out this year instead of the more beautiful and benign woodland birds who are tricked into rearing cuckoo young.
Strangely, the cuckoo’s call at the start of spring had fallen silent, and I felt something routine and familiar in my life was missing. It was an unnerving, visceral feeling.
At the start of October, the more open, wooded areas on Hobart’s fringe should have been a symphony of cuckoo song. Cuckoo species worldwide derive their name from the loud and far-carrying call of the European cuckoo and, although this is a song attached to that one species, the others tend to also broadcast their presence in an equally loud and rhythmic way.
For me, the trilling, descending song of the fan-tailed cuckoo is the harbinger of spring, far more potent than the appearance of the first welcome swallows.
The cuckoo song then becomes the background sound of summer, breaking the seasons because when I cannot hear cuckoos I know that winter is on the horizon.
Across Eurasia where the common cuckoo flies, the species is cemented in myth, folklore and tradition like no other, except a symbol of fertility, the white stork.
In Scotland it is bad luck to hear a cuckoo before breakfast. In the past, in Germany, a cuckoo’s call heard whilst eating a meal augured a year of hunger. In Norway, a cuckoo heard calling from the north brought death. And in Ancient Greece, “cloud cuckoo land” was a supposed retreat for those wanting to live the life of the gods in the heavens.
There are 12 species of cuckoo in Australia, and four visit Tasmania – the fan-tailed cuckoo, pallid cuckoo and the shining and Horsfield’s bronze-cuckoos.
Throughout time, cuckoos and their victims have been in a co-evolutionary arms race, each adapting to outwit the other. This balance, this natural order of things is being disrupted by the clearing of woodlands where the cuckoos and the lives they turn upside down wage their battles. There are fewer hosts and fewer places for the cuckoos to lay their eggs.
My concern about disappearing cuckoos at the start of spring was soon displaced, however. Seasonal certainty was restored when the cuckoos began to call in large number, as if in unison, well into October. The terrible, stormy weather we have had of late was probably the reason for their late arrival.
But all the same I’m slightly unnerved. And when I hear them now I ask: what will humankind lose if they fall silent? A metaphor, a myth, a portal to the past.