Returned

When we were first locked-down, I resigned myself to not seeing Colin the cuckoo this year and, given his age, possibly never seeing him again. However, now that we are allowed out, we thought we'd go to Thursley today to see a) how busy it was and b) whether there was any sign of Colin. It's only 15 minutes from us so we'd decided we wouldn't stay if it was heaving with people.

When we started walking from the car park at 12.30 pm (it was full, but there were no other people around), we passed a photographer coming back, who had been in Colin's field since 6am and hadn't seen him. Therefore, we dallied on our way, looking unsuccessfully for the Dartford warblers he said he'd seen, and finally rocked up at the field to find three other people there. They said we'd just missed Colin by 15 mins. This was all the encouragement we needed to sit down in the field (socially distanced, of course) and have our lunch and wait. We could hear two cuckoos calling but, after a while, both went quiet. However, after two hours, without warning, Colin flew onto a tree behind and cuckoo-ed loudly before swooping down on to one of the perches. He stayed for 15 minutes, eating mealworms and striking various poses for us (by then there were about 14 of us, spaced out around the field).

So, I'm delighted to say that he has made it back for another summer. Who knows if this will be his last, but I'm just glad to have hung out with him again :)