Faint. Distant. Plaintive. Cuckoo! Cuckoo! Oh word of fear, unpleasing to a married ear. (I’ve been reading a lot of Shakespeare lately.)Perhaps he — the cuckoo, not Shakespeare — was as much as a mile from my hammock. Now in his seventh week. Or should that be the eighth? I first heard him on April 19: was he about to give his last cuckoo of the year?

Sometimes good things can be found in the necessarily disordered thoughts of the hammock naturalist. That’s the idea, anyway. What was that Pogues song? Ah yes, Rainy Night in Soho: I’m not talking of the first times. Never think about the last.

There was something wistful about the call as well as the song. Why are cuckoos always described as plaintive? Isn’t there a species called plaintive cuckoo? Yes, of course there is, it’s an Asian bird, with a series of sweet whistles instead of the call we all know. I think I heard it in India.

We all remember the first kiss of a love affair, never the last. We all notice the first butterfly, the first blossom, the first cuckoo: never the last. One day it just isn’t there anymore. But I was beginning to sound a little plaintive even to myself.

I’m pretty sure that this calling male cuckoo got lucky at least once, because I’ve heard the bubbling sound of female cuckoos several times. But that doesn’t mean he has to stop trying. I remembered a verse from the old Cornish song Camborne Hill, a song we used to sing in The Ship in Porthleven.

Oh please have a baby by me!

Oh please have a baby by me!

I’m, young and I’m strong –

It won’t take very long –

Goooooooing up Camborne Hill comin’ down!

There’s a plaintive note there too. The cuckoo may have continued calling after that, but if so, I was no longer aware of it.

 

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

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