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Joni and the cuckoo

11 June 2017 by Simon Barnes 5 Comments

As Joni rightly said, you don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone. But here’s another truth: you don’t know what’s gone until it’s been gone a long time… We notice stuff when it arrives, of course we do: that’s deep in our natures to do so. We cheer when the swifts appear in our skies: and quote Ted Hughes: they’re back – which means the globe’s still working.

And then there’s a day, round about August 14, when you say: you know, I haven’t seen a swift for a few days. They must have gone already. And it seems all the sadder because the loss was below the threshold of awareness. That same kind of subtle creeping awareness comes with animals in sharp decline: when did you last see a spotted flycatcher or a lesser spotted woodpecker, or hear a turtle dove?

If you’re a phenologist, studying seasonal changes, you have all kinds of data about when things arrive and show and flower and sing for the first time: and very little about when things disappear or shut up.

This year, and for every day of Wild June so far, I have noted a cuckoo calling at my place. I heard one yesterday, as I took a quiet beer out on the marsh, and I jotted it down. And I heard one this morning at dawn, from bed – and still remembered to take a note, though later, later. For the five years I’ve been here, cuckoos have sung from the last week in April to the first week in June. It began a little later this year – May 27 – but he or they is/are still going. Which might be a small change, and might even be a significant change.

And did I hear a female cuckoo this morning as well? That rich, rapid bubbling call? I think so, but I was more than halfway back to sleep by then and the record is therefore suspect. Still, I heard at least one female back in May, so it would see that all this cuckooing has not been in vain.

Will he call again tomorrow? Or does he reckon that’s enough? I’m all eager to make another major contribution to science… unless I fall back to sleep, of course…

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Comments

  1. Ann Davies says

    11 June 2017 at 6:19 pm

    It is so wonderful that you have cuckoos calling where you live!

    I now live in Surrey and haven’t heard a cuckoo for nearly fifty years. Nor has another local resident, born in 1928, whose letter in our local paper this week shows the profound effect the song of the cuckoo can have on our lives:

    ‘… I am an old man now, born in Sussex in 1928. Every Spring, like clockwork, on the first sunny day, a cuckoo came to a chestnut tree in the garden next to our house. My mother had the kitchen door open as she did her work and would say to the children: “It’s the cuckoo.” It was the most wonderful experience. We were evacuated in 1940 and did not return until much later in the war in 1944. I have never heard a cuckoo since…’

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  2. jtaylor395 says

    11 June 2017 at 7:40 pm

    Thank goodness we do still have spotted flycatchers near us here in Staffordshire but I know how lucky we are to be able to say that …

    Reply
  3. Gillian Matthews says

    12 June 2017 at 8:28 am

    I heard a cuckoo for the first time in decades during a walk round Pagham Harbour Nature Reserve (Sussex) in early May- such excitement amongst my walking group! A few days later on a camping trip to Amsterdam we heard a cuckoo with such regularity it almost became background noise….almost.

    Reply
  4. Sophie Adams says

    13 June 2017 at 1:05 am

    How magical to hear the cuckoo from your home. You lucky thing – long may it continue ! Haven’t heard one in Hampshire yet but heard both cuckoo and Nightingale in Tuscany – real treasure I’m still cherishing

    Reply
  5. Anthony Bird says

    13 June 2017 at 4:04 pm

    Thank you,once again,Simon for making me think, this time it is ‘when did I last hear a cuckoo?’, May 2016 at Wicken Fen, certainly I do not hear cuckoos here in Thetford. Keep ’em coming these wonderful blogs that make me think!

    Reply

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