IT IS most encouraging that John Stidworthy (Cuckoos galore, Letters, July 31) could see and hear so many cuckoos on Ilkley Moor this spring and early summer. The Moor does seem to be one of their local strongholds although John Flood, the Wharfedale Naturalists' Bird Recorder until this year, noted in his 2013 report that "The time when members living on the edge of Ilkley Moor used to complain about being bombarded incessantly with calling birds as well as the odd one landing on their lawns seems an age away, although that was still the case when I started this job of recorder in 2003!"

Evidence of the cuckoo's decline nationally comes from British Trust for Ornithology data which shows a drop of 63 per cent in the cuckoo population in England between 1995 and 2010.

Hopefully the upsurge in numbers on Ilkley Moor represents a revival of their fortunes, although in the area of Lower Wharfedale described in my Nature Notes article of July 10 as well as where I live on the southern side of Otley, away from the Chevin, hearing a cuckoo continues to be a rare event.

Denis O'Connor

Riverside Avenue, Otley