Field Notes Journal Entry
On Hearing the First Cuckoo in Spring
A warm, overcast walk around Thrupp Lake marked by the distant call of the first cuckoo, returning migrants, and the quiet activity of early May
My walk today took in Thrupp Lake, part of the Radley Lakes complex, under a warm but overcast sky. The light came and went — patches of sun breaking through to cast dappled shade along the lake edge — but the air itself felt settled, warm, lazy, carrying sound well.
The first cuckoo of the year announced itself from somewhere beyond the immediate landscape, out near the stretch of the Thames Path from Lower Radley to Abingdon — distant, but unmistakable. One of those moments that seems to reset the season slightly; not quite early spring any more.
The swallows were active again, sweeping low over the fields and later skimming the surface of the lake itself. Their movement had a looseness to it today, unhurried but constant. Over the reed beds by Barton Fields, reed warblers have returned, their presence now woven back into the soundscape.
A greenfinch called repeatedly — that long, drawn-out “tsseeeeeeee” — a welcome sound and an indication of a slow local recovery given their recent decline following trichomonosis. Still not abundant, but present again.
Mammals made a quiet showing: three muntjac encountered separately — one male, two females — each moving with that characteristic caution, slipping across the path into undergrowth or feeding just out of clear view.
Thrupp Lake itself was lively. The islands scattered across it continue to act as refuges for nesting birds. Black-headed gulls were already established there, their sharp, insistent calls carrying across the water. Canada geese and greylag geese added their more resonant honking to the mix.
New life was in evidence in the form of two mallard broods: One female leading five ducklings in a neat line astern, another with nine clustered tightly at the lake edge, still keeping close to the margin.
One small, incongruous detail — a terrapin hauled out on a log, motionless in the brief sun.
Notable too was what wasn’t there: the shovelers that had been present earlier in the season are now gone, the quiet turnover of species continuing.
Above it all, a faint but persistent aircraft drone — a reminder of the wider world — though it never quite overrode the more immediate sounds of water, wings, and calls.
A walk that felt like a point of transition: migrants returned, breeding underway, and the season edging forward, marked clearly by that distant cuckoo.