If we want to hear this iconic bird's special song, we must take care of our meadows, stresses the BBOWT's Colin Williams

The cuckoo, a much-vaunted herald of summer, is calling loudly across Oxfordshire’s meadows this year. But how many of these rare birds are here, and for how many more years will we hear their distinctive song?

In the last 25 years the UK has lost more than half of breeding cuckoos, and they are now on the Red List of Birds of Conservation Concern.

This is due to many factors including the long journey from Central Africa where they spend the winter in the Congo Basin and West Africa. Their flight path crosses not only the inhospitable Sahara Desert, but many countries where shooting birds is common. High numbers will be killed before they reach Europe.

When the lucky few have arrived in Britain in recent years they’ve been greeted by wet weather, fewer grubs, caterpillars and beetles which are their staple diet, and fewer nests of farmland birds where the cuckoo will lay its egg.

Over the last 50 years, meadows and grasslands, where cuckoos would usually have found the host nests of dunnocks, reed warblers and meadow pipits in which to lay their eggs, have disappeared. Not much of a ‘welcome back’ to the iconic cuckoo.

It’s well-known that the cuckoo lays its egg in the nest of a smaller bird, and even mimics the colour and markings on the shell so that the surrogate parents think it’s one of theirs. Some of the other eggs are often kicked out to make space for the cuckoos. The newly-hatched chick will remove any remaining eggs so that it’s the only nestling receiving a healthy diet of grubs from the surrogate parents. The young bird will need all the grubs it can get in preparation for the long flight back to Africa. If the cuckoo is to be heard singing loudly across Oxfordshire and other counties in the UK in future years, Wildlife Trusts and other landowners need to ensure the few meadows and grasslands we do have are looked after for wildlife.

In Berkshire, Buckinghamshire and Oxfordshire 103 hectares of grasslands (equivalent to 144 football pitches), which used to brim with wild flowers and butterflies have disappeared since 2005 and are no longer registered Local Wildlife Sites. Nineteen of these are in Oxfordshire. Some have been made into paddocks for pony grazing or had trees planted on them, one site was mown for caravan parking and another has had topsoil dumped on it; many more have been overwhelmed with scrubby bushes and trees.

These vanishing grasslands are important wildlife habitats for insects, birds such as the dunnocks and meadow pipit, and small mammals. They provide vital resources for bees and other insects that we all rely on to pollinate food crops; they also store carbon and secure soils to hold and filter water which prevents flooding and pollution. Thankfully the Berks, Bucks & Oxon Wildlife Trust is now managing more grasslands for wildlife. Recent acquisitions of Meadow Farm, near Bicester, and a pasture at Shifford to extend Chimney Meadows nature reserve will help to provide suitable habitats for newly-arrived cuckoos.

During the last two weeks of April, I heard cuckoos across the trust’s Iffley Meadows nature reserve near Oxford’s southern ring road. The males call ‘cuckoo’ while the females utter a bubbling liquid call similar to a green woodpecker’s ‘yaffle’.

Most of us will hear and never see the cuckoo, but it’s worth watching and waiting after you’ve heard the call of ‘cuckoo’, just in case you can spot the bird fly from a tree or a fence post. What would summer be without the call of the cuckoo?

Sign up to the Save Our Vanishing Grasslands petition www.wildlife trusts.org/grasslands to be presented with evidence of the loss of grasslands across the UK, to the Secretary of State for the Environment Owen Paterson.