Good news enough to warm even the coldest hearts - after much delay, the weekend heatwave heralded the arrival of the Cuckoo.
Saturday morning echoed to the calls of a Cuckoo here in the Rural Shires. Not only that, the Turtle Dove also arrived in the parish its delicate purring drifting on the warm air from the nearby hedgerow scrub.
Interestingly, the Visiting Minnesotan didn't know the call of the Cuckoo - in the US they don't have our proper cuckoo-ing clock-living cuckoo, except in the very far western islands of Alaska, which are virtually in Asia anyway! Instead they have several similar shaped species none of which go "cuckoo".
So why the late arrivals? Most likely they are linked to the recent low temperatures and prevailing northerly winds - we were scraping ice off the windscreen only two weeks ago! A few birds may have pushed on northwards into the cold but most - the smart ones in my book - will have waited, perhaps sunning themselves on the French Riviera or in the Bois de Boulogne.
Saying that, the Turtle Doves prefer not to loiter in French airspace, what with them being amongst the favoured targets of le homme avec le fusil de chasse - the man with the shotgun! so they may have enjoyed a stop-over on the Costas.
As spring glides kindly into summer, keep you ears open for nature's welcoming sounds - Cuckoo, Turtle Dove, lawnmower. ice cream van, champagne cork!
LC James
Landlocked
26th May 2010
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