I was walking with our smallest, mightiest dog, tracing round the inlet track, and I was feeling not quite down in the dumps but also not quite perky when I reached the tall, towering gums that I’m convinced are mother trees, and there were Cuckoos, Cuckoos everywhere.
And in that moment, I transformed from a very simple human to a Huntress of the Shining Cuckoos song, leaping in between long swathes of dry grass, craning my neck to peer in amongst the trees and I couldn’t see them, but I could hear them.
And I was really so delighted. Is this what we are supposed to feel like? It felt like the most important thing, to be here, in this moment, noticing cuckoos.
The Cuckoo! Their tiny bodies- 25g!!- flown all the way from Australia to deliver us the message that spring is here. Timed perfectly with the change of the clocks for daylight savings and the fact that I’ve noticed the light change from faintly golden to a more striking form of white, and now I was walking, and it was spring and it was the Cuckoos.
And then I was full of questions. Was this spring messenger the reason they were chosen as the bird for Cuckoo Clocks? How have I only learned about the Cuckoo song as an adult? What else were my ears missing all these years?
But the song poured into me and when my phone beeped with messages from my friend all the way from Scotland, I told her that I was out tracking cuckoos. And she replied, The Cuckoos! Of course you are!
Like this is, and should be, the most obvious of answers to receive.
What else should we be doing but pausing to welcome in the Cuckoos.
Happy Spring my southern people
A quick sketch of my Cuckoo from this weekend.