At first, I hardly noticed the sound at all. A pair of monosyllabic notes, somewhere far to the north. But had I just imagined it? Then I heard it once again; surely the call of a distant cuckoo. I dashed out of my garden office, binoculars in hand, and headed down the cow-parsley-strewn lane on my bike.
Stopping briefly to listen again … yet nothing. But then, as I rode slowly along the lane, I could hear the call coming from the far side of a field. Scanning along the hedgerow, I found it: tail up, wings down, the unmistakable silhouette of a cuckoo.
Why was I so excited? After all, I’ve encountered plenty of cuckoos this spring down on the Avalon Marshes, a few miles from my home.
The reason this bird was so special is that, 13 springs after we arrived in Somerset, it is the only cuckoo I have ever heard from my garden. It’s not the very first: some years ago, my old friend John Lister-Kaye heard one calling, while I was away in London.
But it is my first – bringing mixed feelings of joy and sadness: joy to hear this siren of spring, yet sadness that this bird, once so common in my village, is now such a rare visitor.
