Flowers in the verges of my lane have changed from the blue bells and sweet cicely of Spring to the meadow sweet, with bursts of red campion and blue cranesbill, of mid-summer. 

A botanical friend from Scotland came to stay for a few days and we explored the nature reserve at Marsett Rigg near Semerwater, where we saw fragrant, spotted and marsh orchids, twayblades, globe flower and birds-eye primrose. I was worried that the globe flower would be over, they cover the meadow in Spring, and we were lucky to find a patch still flowering in a boggy place at the northern edge of the reserve.

At first sight the Rigg is just untidy rough grassland grazed by cattle, but keeping the sheep out allows botanical richness to grow. Over the wall in the fields that lead to Bardale Beck waterfall the grass is closely cropped by sheep and there are no orchids, though the purple flowers of butterwort were nestled in the banks of the beck.

The cuckoos that called throughout May and June in the woods along the stream that flows past the village where I live, have gone. I listened to them through the open window of my bedroom in the very early morning as dawn lightened the sky and sunlight crept over the fells; and then at the end of June the distinctive call of early summer went quiet.

The British Trust for Ornithology tracks the migration of cuckoos using satellites and has a website where you can follow their progress. Each of their tagged birds has a name and they go in different directions. At the moment, one is in southern Sweden (Bean, named after the actor Sean Bean), the others are in Europe, some as far south as Spain (Frederic) and Italy (Sayaan). From there they will cross the Sahara to tropical Africa for the European winter.

The cuckoo migration made me ponder on how differently cuckoos, and other migrating birds, must perceive the world. No one place is home, life shifts with the seasons following ancient instincts that lead them unerringly to where they need to go. Whereas here I am, in one place, where the seasons come to me and I watch them flow by as the year turns.

Have you been watching the summer season unfold and with it the bird migration and changes in flowers?

Rowan on the Moor

A Moodscope member

Cuckoo migration tracking:

https://www.bto.org/get-involved/volunteer/projects/cuckoo-tracking/updates