Cuckoo - 1894

Cuculus canorus

A common summer visitor.

The Cuckoo appears to delight in the mountain parts of the county. We used to look out for its first appearance at Stone Hall, in the last week of April, and the 20th of that month is the earliest date on which we first welcomed its familiar cry. We heard a Cuckoo one year calling as late as at the end of the first week in July ; it is unusual to hear the voice of the Cuckoo after mid-summer. By the banks of the Cleddy Cuckoos were specially numerous. While we have been fishing we have heard six or seven calling at once, and the birds were constantly flying back-wards and forwards about the stream.

Mr. Tracy observes that he never found a Cuckoo's egg, except in the nests of the Meadow Pipit and the Tree Pipit, but the birds avail themselves, doubtless, of a larger selection than this of small birds to take charge of their introduced young. Mr. Mortimer Propert met with its egg in the nests of the Meadow Pipit, Sky-lark, Hedge-sparrow, and Robin. The nest of the common Pied Wagtail is very often chosen.

Mathew M.A. 1894, Birds of Pembrokeshire and it's Islands