Summer VISITORS

Now that we have entered the prelude to summer with the late spring rain, we also have the pleasure of welcoming various summer visitors, like the cuckoos, the European roller, the bushveld kingfisher and other bird species who do not stay over in winter but take wing to warmer climates.

The interesting thing about these bird species is that somehow they know when to leave the region wherever they stay in winter and trek southwards.  I want to single out a few of these bird species as they have peculiar attributes, like, for instance the redchested cuckoo, the Afrikaans name is the Piet-my-vrou, from a rendering of the calls they make.  We can hear them calling endlessly, not only in daytime, but also during the night, but they are not easy to see, as they hide in the top branches of high trees for long periods during which they call.  They come from regions in central Africa and normally arrive in our region in October and leave again in April, but this year they only arrived in November.  The reason for this delay is that we have not had sufficient rain in October and these birds live mainly on caterpillars which only appear when the humidity is high, which means that the cuckoos sit somewhere in the Congo but in some way they know exactly when we will be having the first decent spring rain and they frequently appear about a day or three before the rain!  We are not quite sure how they know exactly when to come, because I do not believe that they watch the weather reports on TV!

They are extremely bad parents, the female lays one egg per nest in the nest of other local breeding birds like various robins, thrushes and chats and leaves the upbringing of their children to the poor birds in whose nest the egg is laid, and not only that, but their chicks throw out the host bird's eggs or chicks within four days after hatching!  Some of the other cuckoo species do not throw out the host's chicks, they just trample them to death and some of them even demand to be fed for a few weeks after they are big enough to leave the nest and fend for themselves!

Good by for now!

Oupa