What can be better for the soul than logging the first cuckoo of spring? | Rob Penn

Tracking life in our garden or backyard is turning many of us into nature diaristsI heard the first cuckoo on Wednesday evening. I was outside the back door splitting logs when the song floated down from the copse on Bryn Arw, the hill behind our house in the Black Mountains. Cuckoos have been coming to the same copse for as long as we have lived here and I have always written down the date of their arrival from Africa. It is an important moment in the turning year, as the lyrics to the traditional medieval round attest: "Sumer is icumen in/ Lhude sing cuccu."My recordings of cuckoos have always been haphazard, though. Some years, because the weather is dreadful or I am working hard and chained to a desk, I fail to get outside. I might first hear the male's distinctive song, which gives the bird its onomatopoeic name, days after his actual arrival. Continue reading...