What's It Like Up There

Last week, while walking our crazy spaniel, my daughter and I watched and heard a cuckoo fly, from a small group of willow trees, up, up and away into a larger plantation of fir trees. It remained on the edge of the trees and perched precariously on the very top. A much smaller bird came out of the willows after the cuckoo and actually dived at it. The cuckoo remained in situ and kept on singing, looking only a little ruffled. The small bird - which might have been a willow warbler - kept dropping back and diving, dropping back and diving, for a very long time. Now, I'm wondering if this was the male cuckoo and he was distracting the little bird so that the female cuckoo could lay her egg in the nest. Everyone knows that cuckoos don't build their own nests and that they dump their offspring on smaller birds who work far too hard to get the baby cuckoo ready for Africa in August.
Nature has everything.


Today, in the middle of May, we had snow. Last week we had that wonderful warm…