The first Cuckoo

Today I heard the cuckoo calling for the first time this year. He sounded very happy and his song rang out loud and clear.
It's always fascinating to think of the birds that migrate and go somewhere for the Winter and then come back. They don't need passports and vaccinations, they just go where they need to in order to survive.
In spite of their happy song cuckoos don't have a great reputation. They lay their eggs in someone else's nest. Not for them the gathering of twigs and leaves, they let others do the hard work.
When you hear the cuckoo's song heralding the arrival of the warm weather, beautiful blossom and the return of lush green leaves it's hard to picture what this bird actually does. The Cuckoo is considered a parasite as it lays its eggs in the nests of other birds. The eggs vary in colour and often resemble those of the unlucky bird whose nest is chosen.
The cuckoo lays about twelve eggs but they are all laid in different nests. When the young cuckoo is hatched it turns our all the other fledglings and eggs and they are left to perish on the ground. It's hard to understand Mother Nature, and why they don't build  build their own nests.  So when you hear the Cuckoos song spare a thought for their victims.

Cuckoos are brown when they are young but adult cuckoos all look the same, male and female.

My poem for the day is by William Wordsworth (1770 - 1850),

To The Cuckoo

O blithe New-comer! I have heard,
I hear thee and rejoice,
O Cuckoo! shall I call thee bird,
Or but a wandering Voice?

While I am lying on the grass
The twofold shout I hear;
From hill to hill it seems to pass,
At once far off and near.

Though babbling only to the vale
Of sunshine and of flowers,
Thou bringest unto me a tale
Of visionary hours.

, Thrice welcome, darling of the Spring!
Even yet thou art to me
No bird, but an invisible thing
A voice a mystery.

the same whom in my schoolboy days
I listened to, that Cry
Which made me look a thousand ways
In bush, and tree, and sky.

To seek thee did I often rove
Through woods and on the green;
And thou wert still a hope, a love;
Still longed for, never seen.

And I can listen to thee yet;
Can lie upon the plain
And listen, till I do beget
That golden time again.

O blessed bird! the earth we pace
Again appears to be
An unsubstantial, faery place,
That is fit home for thee!