Channel-billed Cuckoo Glebe (Sydeny)

[Andrew Taylor <>]

My first Channel-billed Cuckoo heard yesterday (7th) in Jubilee Park
in Glebe - my earliest by a couple of days.  This matches the earliest
arrival reported in Birds of Sydney which has observations going back
from 1990 to pre-WWII.  But there have earlier arrivals in recent years
reported on birding-aus and elsewhere.

Earlier dates of first arrival is sometimes inferred to indicated earlier
mean arrival of a migrant perhaps caused by climate change, but either
an increase in the number of observers or an increase in the migrant's
numbers will also tend to produce earlier first arrival observations.

I suspect there is a significant change in first arrival dates for
CBCs in Sydney - it would be good to get a few decades of data and do
the statistics - but it might be hard to show there is an effect not
explained by increases in observers & CBCs.

Andrew