When the Cuckoo Calls

The cuckoo is a strange bird. Its call is unmistakeable and an indication in England that Spring has arrived with all the softness and gentleness that makes that season so special there. The season when pale colours predominate; yellow and white narcissus; bright yellow daffodils; yellow, white and pale purple crocuses; the palest of pale yellow Irises; pale, delicate snowdrops; Lilac blossom and yellow Forsythia; the pale, fresh green of newly opened leaves on bush and tree. No wonder Robert browning wrote:


Oh, to be in England
Now that April's there,
And whoever wakes in England
Sees, some morning, unaware,
That the lowest boughs and the brushwood sheaf
Round the elm-tree bole are in tiny leaf,
While the chaffinch sings on the orchard bough
In England - now!


The cuckoo is one of those rare birds that do not build their own nests. Instead, the female lays its eggs in a nest already made by a bird of another species, ejecting any eggs that might already be there before laying her own. Sometimes she chooses to lay her eggs in the nest of a bird much tinier than herself and yet when the chicks hatch and soon become larger than the parent bird, that parent forages tirelessly to feed the ever open maw of this huge impostor who she thinks is her own offspring. It is nothing short of amazing that nature permits this deception so that the cuckoo may survive and with its singular call, brighten English hearts on a bright May morning.

How well I remember those long, sunny, Spring days we had in Wales during the wartime years that seemed to stretch on forever, as the lengthening days succeeded the short dark ones of winter. Those years seemed to produce fairer weather than has been the case since. I wonder why? My imagination; the wonder of youth that fills every passing minute with joy that makes it seem eternal; or God’s compensation for all to alleviate the suffering inherent in war? I can’t pretend to know but I do know they were days, the memory of which is indelibly fixed in my mind. Days of care-free wandering in the hills and fields, sometimes alone and sometimes with friends: Days when my imagination took flight and even when no friends were with me, I was accompanied by Romans, Celtic Priests and Princes and even sometimes, people from earlier times. It was a magical period of my life.

Sometimes we boys would climb trees to reach the nests of crows and magpies, searching for their eggs. They were such a pest when lambs were tiny that the farmers encouraged us to steal as many of their eggs as possible. At other times we would walk stealthily through the rushes and reeds on the wetlands and watch in amusement as Curlews pretended to have broken legs or wings to draw us away from their shallow nests on the ground. There were so many birds then that the few eggs we boys would steal to add to our collections had no adverse impact on their numbers. How we used to whoop with delight when we had an egg that nobody else had been able to find! Carefully we would blow the eggs and then lay them on a cushion of cotton wool in a cardboard box which would be hidden somewhere where it could not be discovered by some of the less scrupulous boys.

However, the prize par excellence amongst eggs was that of the cuckoo! We would patiently search the nests of Hedge Sparrows, Yellowhammers, Blackbirds, Thrushes and others seeing if we could spot that tell-tale huge egg and because Cuckoos were not that numerous, it was rare if we found one. The interesting thing was that the Cuckoo did not begin calling until after laying its eggs, so listening for that distinctive call and watching where its undulating flight would take it, did not help us, for by then it was too late.

Nevertheless that haunting “cuckoo, cuckoo, cuckoo,” echoing across the fields is an abiding memory of the carefree days of my childhood. I have only to hear it on a record or listen to the wonderful orchestral reproduction of it in Beethoven’s Pastoral Symphony, to be transported back to the gentle, rolling, hillside fields of Wales. I become a boy again and know that life stretches out endlessly and joyously ahead of me. All thoughts of ageing and uncertainties about the future, here and hereafter, disappear. Ah! The healing properties of nostalgia!