I've wondered about this too. I was asking a friend in Wicklow, and she said that she'd always heard (like Ian):

The cuckoo comes in April

She sings her song in May

In the middle of June

She changes her tune

And in August she flies away.

Sexism, of course, it's the males singing plaintively to advertise themselves to possible mates that give the cuck-oo, cuck-oo clock-sounding call.

In Ireland, the cuckoos arrive, flying north, tanned and relaxed, in April, and in May begin to sing for a mate; they pair up in June, and lay their eggs in someone else's nest (normally choosing the nest of the same species of bird that raised themselves), and by September they've headed south again, along with the swallows, corncrakes and so on.

(By the way, I understand that drought in the Sahel is one of the reasons for the corncrake's near extinction, as well as the use of mechanical harvesting which chops the heads off the young birds as they cringe in their nests amid the long grasses.)

But what I can't find out is *where* the cuckoos go when they fly south from Ireland. Anyone know?

And by the same token, are there any birds that migrate from Ireland to Crete?