‘ I’ve heard the cuckoo and was coming to knock on your door and tell you,’ he said, confirming its usual haunt.  
Spring migrants arrive and I’m all ears. The essential rhythms of spring,  Nature as we know and love her.  I cannot find the cuckoo but redstart are back, in tentative song.
On Saturday,  intermittent showers all day.   Mud poached by the Welsh Black cattle had baked hard, now rain gives a superficial softness.  The air is saturated with moisture, like a sauna. 

Time out of mind, spring comes with a chorus of birdsong. A fanfare for renewal and rebirth with tree-flowers and fresh leaves, insects on the wing and birds  loud and jubilant. This spring, I'm seeking to turn up the volume.  How do we tell the story of our times? Somewhere between rejoicing and lament, lament at Climate Change, loss of habitat, loss of species.
On Cunswick Fell we try to shut out traffic on the Kendal Bypass and listen to skylark.  Numbers are not what they were.  Beside the Church of St John Helsington,  linnet sing in the tree tops.   At last. They are hard to find and I know their traditional breeding grounds.

From Helsington Church you can see damson blossom all across the Lyth Valley. In orchards about the hamlets of Row and The Howe, about farmsteads, in gardens and bordering fields.  Damsons are delicious and when the last wizened fruit linger on trees run-to-wild the leaves are mellow in autumn colour.  From Whitbarrow, we came down past a limekiln or two, surprising roe deer in an orchard. The scent of wild garlic in the air. white blossoms of wild cherry beside Durham Bridge Wood.

Season of tree flowers:  catkins of birch, willow and bog myrtle.  A budding canopy full of birdsong,  birds  handsome in best breeding plumage, in display and song-flight.  A  banquet invites  them to the table.  Long feeders where siskin, redpoll, tree sparrow, goldfinch and reed bunting  feed in a sunny glade where a green hairstreak alights on the grass.  Redpoll call in the  trees about the glade, in dipping –restless flight. sunlight fires the red poll, makes beaks translucent.  A kestrel flies over tree-tops and hovers, hunting.  A sparrowhawk darts through the clearing and small birds scatter and fall silent,  until the banquet tempts them to return.  A great spotted woodpecker balances on the feeder, bold of feature in her black and white mask.

Smardale Fell is exhilarating in a chill April wind. Larks are singing, red grouse cackle and fly low over heather.  Diffuse sunlight gives the landscape the look of a watercolour, pools of light, winter trees outlined on the horizon,  distant sheep give hints  of brightness. From Smardale Fell dark skeletons of hawthorn.  Limekilns and the fell-side quarry glimmer. The line of the disused railway is hidden in the trees.
Shall we hear the ghost train of Smardalegill Viaduct?

 From Kirkby Stephen we crossed the River Eden at Frank’s Bridge and headed for  the wood south of Ladthwaite Beck and Ewbank Scar, its cliff visible through the open canopy of early April.  Fallen trees lay across the  muddy  path, diverted where  the bank had eroded. A wood of adventure and promise, with primroses and white flower buds of wood sorrel.  On a mossy trunk  of the woodland floor there was dog lichen fringed with filaments of white.  Bluebells and ramsons were in leaf and will be spectacular.