First Cuckoo Day in Sussex

A naturalist who sent Hone the average arrival days of the spring birds from a twenty years’ journal noted that 14 April was called First Cuckoo Day in Sussex. On that day the cuckoo might sometimes be heard, though his journal put the day it was commonly heard a week later, on 21 April. The naturalist’s calendar of Hone’s Year Book repeated it some years later, noting under 14 April that this was cuckoo day in Sussex.