The notion of the hammock naturalist is clearly gaining traction: and not before time. Yesterday I was asked to talk about it on Radio 4’s PM programme. Here’s what I said: 

          The hammock is an essential piece equipment for any serious naturalist. It’s the portal to a million new ways of observing and understanding nature: enforcing a measure of contemplation unavailable in more energetic pursuit of wildlife.

Mine is hung beneath a magisterial ash tree on the edge of a floodplain in the Norfolk Broads. The extensive views of the sky – stuff that we have in immense quantities in this county – has recently been compromised by the shockingly late emergence of the ash leaves.

My eyes have not become redundant: yesterday a male marsh harrier cruised nonchalantly past with wings almost brushing the tree, and now I’m regularly seeing a hoverfly hanging so still it looks as if it has been pinned to the air.

But ears are the main thing: ears and the drama of my own thoughts. There’s a blackcap that sings from a nearby willow: a song that so flutey and fruity that it has been called the northern nightingale.

And then the cuckoo starts up again. Well, it has hardly stopped. The call is simple and carries for miles: and that’s precisely the point. A cuckoo doesn’t go in for the domestic life, like a blackcap and most other birds. There’s no place a cuckoo calls home.

So the male seeks to summon a female from long-range, greet her, perform the great deed and move on. As May advances the calls get more and more imploring: last chance! Last chance to meet wonderful me! Last chance to make more cuckoos! Last chance to become an ancestor!

In a week or two they’ll all be gone: leaving only an egg or two in the nest of some luckless host. For a cuckoo the season is lightning brief: make the most of it or regret it forever. But I will return to my hammock, swaying beneath the ash, ready for the next day’s instalment of nature, the story that has no ending.

 

https://www.waterstones.com/book/how-to-fly/simon-barnes/9781526687548

https://www.amazon.co.uk/How-Fly-Taking-Insects-Humans/dp/1526687542