And So Do I

Plenty of weather about in recent days so a good time to dig out Hardy’s poem ‘Weathers’, which, we all remember, starts

This is the weather the cuckoo likes,

And so do I;

When showers betumble the chestnut spikes,

And nestlings fly;

To thoroughly mess up Thos. Hardy’s text: This is the place the pipits like – and so does the cuckoo.

And the cuckoo was out and calling this morning. The female cuckoo is fond of the pipit’s nest for depositing her egg and this pair may not be aware they are very close to one of the best places in the region to see cuckoos. The cuckoo population is now described as declining so it’s interesting that its favoured place around here is just where the old grouse moor has become wilder with plenty of what the managers call scrub: young birch and rowan where I’ve often seen cuckoos. Now this spread of native trees onto boring heather would never have been allowed to happen had the conservation organizations been managing the land years ago. They would have kept it as close to a grouse moor as they could.

So we would not have had the cuckoos.

(But we would have had cowpats and barbed wire much earlier and that would have been so much better wouldn't it?)