Monday 9 May 2016

Proof That God Has A Sense Of Humour

After a few days of busily creating the earth, the sea, and almost everything on it, God got round to the birds. He happily gave us blackbirds and song thrushes, and their beautiful voices, and even managed to squeeze a decent song into the little robin and even littler wren. Just as he thought he’d made enough birds, he chuckled to himself and thought, ‘Room for just one more – but just to be fair, I’ll only give it to them for a few months each year’. So he rubbed his hands together again and, with a ‘ploof’, there it was... a largish and slightly chubby plain grey bird with a long tail blinked up at him as he gave it its voice. 'I won’t give you a name’ he thought, ‘ They’ll soon think of one for themselves’. Hee hee hee’. And he shuffled off, still laughing.

And so it came to pass that we got the cuckoo.

Our local cuckoos arrived from lolling about in their warm and dry overseas wintering grounds a few days ago. They have now fully found their Skye feet... and their God-given voices. This morning, and for the second morning running, at 4.17am, just as the first grey fingers of dawn begin to creep over the moor, the night-time peace is shattered….

COOK-COO, COOK-COO, COOK-COO, COOK-COO, COOK-COO…

This is no sweet tweet or twitter. This is a full-on shout. Within two minutes, I am fully awake. God’s practical joke has a cunning plan. Unlike a dripping tap or ticking clock, which keep a perfectly regular soporific rhythm, the cuckoo ‘sings’ for about twenty COOK-COOs, then it pauses for just long enough so that you think it has stopped at last, before filling its ample lungs again and launching into a further foray of twenty or thirty COOK-COOs. Just occasionally, to really catch you out, it does a COOK without the COO…!! How hilarious…

The cuckoo also flies about a bit, so the ‘song’ comes from a variety of directions. The bird can still COOK-COO whilst in flight, but prefers to alight on the top of a pine tree where it can spot an open bedroom window to shout towards. By now, the rest of the dawn chorus is in full swing as well of course (also woken up by the cuckoo…??) – but the sweetness of songbirds and twittering and chirping of the finches, tits and warblers is all but drowned out by the cuckoo.

After a couple of hours of lying awake listening to all this, one’s brain begins to numb to the incessant ‘song’, and one returns to a fitful doze until the alarm goes off and the human day begins. Even then, the cuckoo is still at it, and today, one continued to serenade me throughout my morning amble up the road with Cupar where it faced spooky competition from several drumming snipe.  And you know what? I wouldn’t be without the birds for the world. 

Nice one, God.

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