As much as I love what I do, sometimes I’m at work in the orchard on days when I’m weary from the weight of it all. I just want to get finished with the task at hand. I’m too tired or discouraged to appreciate the pleasures of the green trees and blue skies before me. But then, out of the corner of my eye, I catch a glimpse of some sort of feathered creature on the wing and it seems he’s lifting my spirit up as he rises into the canopy of trees. Sometimes it’s a warbler or a woodpecker. Sometimes it’s a blue grosbeak or a summer tanager. Today it was a yellow-billed cuckoo.
It was the flash of that long, coppery-brown tail that got my attention. It fluttered from one tree to another and alighted on a bare stretch of limb momentarily, before dipping into the foliage again. Yellow billed cuckoos are curious birds with an interesting legend. They’re summer residents here in the orchard. I hear them often on the hot, dog days of summer.
Cuckoos are strange and somewhat secretive birds. They are one of the few birds that eat hairy caterpillars like the tent caterpillars and walnut caterpillars that spin their unsightly webs upon my pecan trees and munch on their leaves. These curious birds have been documented gorging themselves on as many as 100 caterpillars in a single sitting, so they are more than welcome here.
Yellow-billed cuckoos are most renown for their somewhat haunting, croaking or knocking call, which they emit in response to hearing any loud noise, much like a gobbling turkey. As a result of this behavior they have been bestowed with the moniker, “Rain crow”, because they like to reply to the rolling thunder. This led to the common folklore that if you heard a rain crow calling, you knew it was going to rain.
European cuckoos have a bad reputation that results from mooching off other bird species. They lay their eggs in the nests of other birds and thus, con other birds into raising their young. Yellow-billed cuckoos are slightly more responsible. They will resort to this same tactic, laying eggs in the nests of catbirds, thrushes, and robins, but apparently out of courtesy, they do so only when their prey-caterpillars, cicadas, and moths are abundant.
Their young often have an advantage in the nests of other birds because yellow billed cuckoos have one of the shortest nesting cycles of all the birds. They can be fully feathered within a week of hatching and the total time from which the eggs begin to be incubated until the fledglings leave the nest can be as short as 17 days. They are one of the last of the migratory birds to arrive here to their breeding grounds in the spring, which cuts into child-rearing time. Thus, this short nesting cycle of the cuckoo is another of nature’s intricate means of making all this life fit onto our planet.
Along with many of my other favorite orchard birds, the cuckoos will be flying south soon. They spend their winters in the warm climes of South America. Those in my orchard fly south via Central America, or they may island hop along the West Indies along their route, which can end as far south as the Argentinian border and expands West over the continent until they reach the Andes.
If it is thought of at all, bird migration is just accepted as one of those things that happens. For most of us, there are too many more pressing matters to occupy our thoughts of a day. But, when you consider it, how fascinating it is to ponder that cuckoos and warblers and all the other migratory birds live their lives split by the seasons. Imagine, picking up and moving every 6 months. It’s a good thing they travel light.
I suppose that if I had the means I would do the same thing. Especially on these days, weary weighted with work, I like to imagine a life lived by summer somewhere in the Rockies, catching trout from clear streams every day and walking in the thin air. Returning to my south-Georgia home from October through May, so that I avoid the brutal cold of the mountain West and the worst of the gnats and insufferable, humid summer heat here in the Coastal Plain. Both places sparse with people.
But then, I look out at these trees, at this land. I see the fruit of this weighted labor. This time of year as the harvest is at hand, the orchards are at their peak. I’m mowing the grass low and slick, the trees are standing green and laden in all their glory. The sunlight is golden upon the foliage waving in the first cool breeze of autumn. The cuckoo and his migratory colleagues are calling and skirting tree to tree, preparing for their journey. Trying to scarf up every bit of energy offered up by the insects crawling over bark and leaf. How glorious. Made so by the work of the summer and the divine touch of sunlight and water.
When I think about it, I prefer connection over comfort. Here, I am connected with that tangled flow of information and energy taking place in the world. Sunlight to leaf; leaf, soil and water to root; root to sap; sap back to leaves and nuts; leaves and nuts to insects and birds; the nuts to deer, racoons, squirrels, birds, and I hope, mostly to me. Then, it all goes back around again, with me sticking my grubby hands into the mix here and there to do my part in helping to move things along. The birds fly on to South America for the winter warmth, transferring that energy below the equator as others, more cold hardy take their winter’s rest here, bringing their energy from elsewhere. All of it connected.
As I pass back and forth down the orchard rows, the day lingers on. I see a number of cuckoos flying between the trees and dipping into and out of the foliage. At the end of the day, after the mowing is completed and the thick, mounding layer of grass is washed off the deck of the rotary mower, I pull the tractor under the shed, switch off, and step down, stretching my back. It feels good to stand up. I listen for a moment and sure enough, I hear that crazy knocking sound echoing from the trees. I look off in the distance at clouds full of rain approaching. The wind stirs. A raindrop falls.
Thoughts From The Orchard 