The early arrival of the monsoon and a possible link with Pied Cuckoo arrivals is the subject of a short article by Max Martin writing in the Mail Today on Saturday, 6 June. (Please note that the photo was taken by Clement Francis.) A shortened version also appeared in The Hindu News Update Service on the same day.

We’d like to clarify that the earliest first sighting date for migrant Pied Cuckoos this year was not from the Biligiriranga Hills in Karnataka (which is what the article says), but rather from Kolkata on 17th May by Kshounish Sankar Ray.

Other recent sightings have included:
Chandigarh, 23 May (Vikram Jit Singh); Bangalore, 24 May (Suma Rao); 26 May, Bhubaneswar (Aditya C Panda); 26 May, Dehra Dun (Suniti Bhushan Datta); 28 May, Nagpur (Soham Mehta); 29 May, Jalpaiguri (Mousumi Dutta); 2 June, Pune (Anirudh Chaoji); 7 June, Goa (Fionna Prins). All these sightings were reported to MigrantWatch and can be seen on the Pied Cuckoo Campaign page after you log in. (you can also see records from previous years, all the way back to 1910).

In addition to these sightings,  Sunjoy Monga saw a Pied Cuckoo at Mumbai on 1 June, Mumbai (sent to birdsof bombay); Arunachalam Kumar reported seeing a Pied Cuckoo on 10 May in Mangalore (sent to bngbirds), but it isn’t clear whether the species is migrant or resident in this area.

For those of you who are tracking the progress of the monsoon rains, the Indian Meteorological Department, Mumbai has a very useful map indicating the dates of normal onset of the monsoon (there is also a more detailed map on wikipedia). The map for this year’s onset of the monsoon (from IMD, Pune) shows how much earlier the rains have arrived in 2009.