IT is around this time of year that we could once expect the distinctive sound of the male cuckoo’s voice.

The famous old verse that highlighted the bird’s brief summertime visit to this country was repeated regularly among country people.

It went:

In April, come he will,

In May he sings all day,

In June he changes his tune,

In July he prepares to fly,

And in August, go he must.

Now the sound of the cuckoo is heard on far fewer occasions, and I was pleased last year that some regular readers provided details of their experiences.

From their reports it seems the few cuckoos that did arrive in our country appeared to settle in a particular area and remain there for a few weeks.

Certainly the female claims a patch of territory that she scours for the nests of those species who might become foster parents for her brood.

At intervals of 24 hours, she might lay up to twelve eggs in the nests of twelve different birds, her favourites being dunnocks, meadow pipits, reed warblers and, perhaps, robins or pied wagtails.

Her eggs can often closely resemble those of the foster parents. She will remove an egg from the selected nest to make room for her own, and it seems the unwitting foster parents will cheerfully accept this.

Later, when the cuckoo chick hatches, its first instinct is to remove all the remaining eggs or nestlings by heaving them over the side of the nest. Its hollow back is designed for this task.

In that savage way, it gains the full attention of its loving foster parents. It will grow far larger than its foster parents who may even perch on its shoulders to feed it.

This dreadful misuse of unsuspecting small birds turns the cuckoo into a figure of hate, particularly as it destroys so many of our smaller birds during its reproduction processes. Some small birds will mob a female cuckoo.

So far as the old verse above is concerned, there is a more precise date for the cuckoo’s arrival and that is April 14 – next Sunday, in fact.

Across a large part of England, this is widely known as Cuckoo Day because it is when the distinctive notes of the male bird can be heard.

The date is also the Feast of St Tiburtius, and another old verse tells that the cuckoo sings from St Tiburtius until St John.

St John’s Day is June 24, which is mid-summer day, and this supports the earlier verse which tells us that the cuckoo changes his tune in June.

For Yorkshire gardeners, however, the sound ]of the cuckoo was the time to plant potatoes. “When you hear the cuckoo shout, it’s time to plant your taties out” was the advice.

Now the sound of the cuckoo is increasingly scarce. This may be due to modern farming techniques that create a loss of habitat for its foster parents, or it might be due to the use of chemical pesticides that destroy its food supply.

There may be other factors, but there is no doubt that fewer of us are hearing the distinctive sounds of the cuckoo in spring.

Bearing in mind the above gardening advice, if there is a shortage of potatoes, I suppose we could always blame the cuckoo!

Regular readers will have realised that I depend heavily upon my filing system and my reference books, old and young, to ferret out much of the information used in this weekly budget.

The internet can also help, although I have to beware of inaccuracies in some of the articles published on the web, but there is no doubt that a major source of my facts is my personal library of books that line the shelves of my study and other parts of the house.

Quite often, those books provide surprises, and that was the case this week when I was researching something for another article.

From my shelves I pulled out Joseph E Morris’s well-known book about The North Riding of Yorkshire.

This was published more than 100 years ago (1906) and consists of potted histories of towns and villages in alphabetical order.

Not only that, the introduction includes details of population, physical features, climate, antiquities, ecclesiology, industries, communications and the overall history of the county.

There were also details of the nearest railway stations so that tourists could visit as many places as possible. No serious tourist could possibly function without it!

Originally, I was checking on St Cuthbert’s links with Crayke, not for this column but for a book I am writing, but Mr Morris’s splendid volume fell open at Cattarick.

At first, I thought this was the wrong spelling of Catterick but in fact, as Joseph Morris goes to great pains to explain, this was the form of spelling used over a long period.

Certainly, it was in use when he published his book, and he is gracious enough to provide an explanation.

He writes that the history of Cattarick is more ancient than the Great North Road, and here I quote from his book, and deeper by far than its neighbour, Richmond.

He even airs the possibility that Cattarick is older than York and reminds us that it was here the Roman city of Cataractonium was sited. It was 24 miles from Isurium (Boroughbridge) and 13 miles from somewhere called Lavatrae.

There was a suggestion that Caratactonium was the site of an earlier city called Caer Caratauc which was one of 28 named by the historian Nennius as being second only to Caer Ebrauc (York).

Detractors from this argument placed Caer Caratauc in Shropshire, while supporters suggested Caratauc was named in honour of a British hero called Caradoc, otherwise known in Latin as Caractacus.

Another theory is that Cataractonium sprang from a waterfall on the Swale, the name meaning the city by the cataract or a village by a cataract, although the nearest waterfall, a small one, was said to be at Richmond.

Yet another proposal is that Cattarick derives from Cathair-righ meaning a fortified or royal city.

A Durham writer called Simeon claimed that the Northumbrian kings had a palace at Cataractonium where they received royal visitors from elsewhere, but it seems that town was once burned to the ground.

At that time, of course, a town was often little more than a small collection of simple houses.

Perhaps the most controversial claim is that Catteractonium was not close to the present site of Catterick but, as Morris says, slightly to the north-west, at the place called Brough.

Throughout his article, Joseph Morris always refers to the village as Cattarick and the bridge as Cattarick Bridge, recording the latter’s construction in 1422-25 as sufficient workmanly in masoncraft and in substance as Barnacastelle brigge.

However, the name of Catterick in my Place-Names of the North Riding (1928) gives different information, with the name of Catrich in 1238 and Catrick in 1362.

It is suggested that names like Cateriz and Cheteriz are Celtic in origin, although this book does give Cataractone or Cataractam as possible alternatives.

So when Cattarick became Catterick is not certain, although my notes do suggest it was Catheryk in 1536 and I think some locals call it Catheryck.