TIME was when nature-lovers throughout Britain held their quill pens in shaking fingers as they waited anxiously to dash off a letter to The Times to declare they had heard the first cuckoo of spring.

The winner was usually a resident of the southern or eastern sea coasts because, of course, that was where these birds would make their first landfall on their long annual migration from Africa.

This meant I never had the chance to raise my pen in eager anticipation but, in those days, I did at least get to hear that unique mating call as one of the clarion songs of summer.

So it is with heavy heart that I report that I have not heard it here in the Yorkshire Dales for at least five years and – as memory serves me less well these days – possibly for a decade or so.

The distinguished British Trust for Ornithology has been monitoring this decline and has managed to place tiny radio locators on several cuckoos which allow them to track the birds’ long journeys to and from the UK. And as July was coming to an end, there were only two specimens still in Britain, one on the south coast, and the other in Norfolk.

Both seemed about to depart so there’s another blank year gone by. But did they at least relish July’s heatwave? If so, perhaps next year they might venture further north. We can all dream I suppose.

* A wildlife survey by the BBC has revealed that we Brits think Prickles the hedgehog is our most popular living thing, beating the badger (now subject to mass culls) the mighty oak (one of several trees under threat from imported disease), the red squirrel (banished to tiny areas of these islands including parts of the Yorkshire Dales) and dear old Robin Redbreast, which alone is doing OK, largely thanks to garden feeders. Prickles was the overwhelming favourite, beating the badger into second place by a massive 3,849 votes to 2,157, but whilst I am delighted for my favourite little charity, The British Hedgehog Preservation Society, the fact that four out of the top five are under threat gives grave pause for thought.

Virtually all the threats here are man made – including the importation of diseased timber from abroad – so what we have put wrong we should be making efforts to put right. Prickle and his fellow contestants need our help.

Obviously, we should try to avoid running over hedgehogs in our cars. Gardeners should be careful as autumn approaches, for strimmer and bonfires are major killers as Prickles looks for somewhere cosy to spend the winter – and can be burned alive particularly on November 5th.

But in a rural area like the Dales, one extra-special care is needed. The BHPS was founded in Shropshire when the local MP found a hedgehog that had starved to death after falling into a cattle grid with no means of escape. Thoughtful farmers and landowners now build in escape ramps.

A bit of bother, no doubt, but worth it to save our most popular wild thing.