Hello everyone
Have you heard the cuckoo? Well, I haven’t heard it for many years, but John Horrocks has not only heard one, but he’s seen one! He wasn’t sure what it was at first, but looked it up in a bird book, and sure enough, it 
was a cuckoo. A bird the size of a collared dove, but with a long tail and different markings. Cuckoos are now quite scarce in Britain, nobody seems to know the exact reason for this, so young cuckoos are being fitted with tracking devices which follow their progress to Africa. There has been some success, but the birds seem to disappear over there.
The whitethroats have arrived in force and can be seen, and heard, up Haskins Lane. The male bird flies vertically up from the hedge tops, singing his scratchy song to 
attract a mate. I saw a male blackcap recently. The female should be called a browncap, for obvious reasons! The male has a lovely song. Walking through the park in Sidmouth the other day, we saw several pairs of grey wagtails in the river Sid, together with a dipper, which performed for us by diving under the shallow water and walking along the river bed looking for food morsels, which he found.
Biddy tells me that the house martins and swifts have arrived in Colestocks. Swifts 
are the last birds to arrive from Africa, and the first to leave, which they will do in July.
One beautiful sunny day, I walked down the lane to the stream in the bottom, near to Brian Cooks, and there were lots of butterflies on the 
wing. I counted seven species, which were large and small whites, orange tips, a comma, a peacock, a speckled wood and a lovely lemon male brimstone. I have not seen so many before or since.
Bye for now, Alan
