The River Kent: sand martins and cuckoo flower

Bank of the River Kent with nest holes of sand martin

She walked along the river bank bearing a bunch of cuckoo flowers. ' You look as if you'll know flowers, what are they?' Her three children came after, flowers spilling out of their arms.  Cuckoo, they smiled with surprise. 
Remember  Maxim de Winter, from Rebecca, ' you must never pick wild flowers.' I turned back and called after her: ' Lady's smock, Cuckoo flower, Milk maids, Cardamine palustris.'  Our Lady's Smock, as if a litany of names would somehow restore them to life.

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What do you see in such a place where town and countryside must somehow seek harmony?  Wood anemone and king cups, cuckoo flower, coltsfoot and willow catkins. Grey wagtail and pied wagtail on a stony river bed where squared blocks of stone show the river reinforced against flood damage.  Golfers at Carus Green and cows heading off to be milked, light industry and housing estates, the distant fells, or the lost idyll of a boy called Kent who swam in the river he is named for.  Do you see a family with armfuls of wild flowers and think the Maxim de Winter admonishment I suppressed or do you smile at the thought of their gathering  wild flowers  for  a family grave at Easter? Is theirs an innocent pleasure, or an ignorance that blights us all?
Later, we came upon wilting cuckoo flowers, Our Lady's Smock  gathered and thrown away.  No ambivalence now, we were despairing, and angry. 
 You must never pick wild flowers, says Maxim de Winter. His creator Daphne du Maurier is dark.  Hitchcock's ' The Birds' is based on her short story where nature takes its revenge for the havoc man wreaks on the planet.  There are the seeds of a short story here.  The Revenge of Cuckoo Flower.  It begins with insomnia. All night long, louder and louder, closer and closer. Cuckoo, cuckoo, Our Lady's Smock, Milk Maids, Cardamine palustris. CUCKOO, CUCKOO.  It's the antithesis of counting sheep.  As for the cuckoo's parasitic habit----  this is the darker version.  * Vantablack, the blackest black created. 
  
* BBC radio 4. Owning Colour. Vantablack, the blackest black, beloved of artists.  Blacker than anything in nature unless you are down a mine or buried deep in the depths of the earth.  The blackest black is made by man.

After a trip to Leighton Moss, where sand martin fed low over the pool at the Public Hide, I wanted more. ( It's a trait I'm told I inherited from my grandmother: if some is good, more is better.) So Pauline and I made our way down beside the River Kent and whilst loving the wild flowers we looked eagerly for signs of sand martin. Seeing largish holes in the bare earth of the river bank, we found a spot where we could see clearly through the riverside trees and waited.  Above the tall trees I glimpsed dark flecks of a couple of hirundine in flight. Yes, sand martin. So we waited. Glad Pauline was patient because nothing seemed to be happening. The cows grazed in the pasture, the occasional overhead flight. Wagtail in the river, shrill oystercatcher.  Nothing.  Then she spied a cluster of sand martin through the trees, low over the river, making for the row of nest holes. A beating of wings, glimpses of white plumage, a dark-mantled bird blocked by one already making an entrance, and out again.  That's how it went. A few birds high in the sky, nothing, nothing, then a flurry of activity.  At first we felt there were only half a dozen birds, but later revised our count as we watched some ten at once crowding about the nest holes.
The sand martins are feeding young and I make a date to return for when the nestlings fledge. I'd like to see them perch on the rim of the entrance for first flight. I'd like to know when I might expect it. That's the secret.