My greeting is aimed at the cuckoo, who heralds the summer, and also at the summer generally, with its gloriously long days and (when it gets it right) warm sunshine.
Whilst I enjoy aspects of the winter, especially those cold crisp days when there’s blue skies and a hard frost or snow on the ground, as a whole, winter is not my favourite season, and at the first sign of spring, usually in February, my spirit lifts.
Then, before we know it, it’s Easter, and the cuckoo is here.
When we think of Yr Wyddfa, bird life probably isn’t something we think greatly about; after all, the habitat of birds is mostly trees and hedges, and there’s not a lot of these on the mountain, although some birds are ground-nesting, of course. And nor is the cuckoo the first bird we’re likely to think of anyway, given that it’s around for only a couple of months in the early summer.
And yet the cuckoo is a regular annual visitor to Yr Wyddfa, usually returning to these parts on 19th or 20th April. (Yes, it really is as regular as that, though this year, because of the unseasonably warm spring, it arrived a little earlier.) Cuckoos are quite hard to spot, and are clearly more easily heard, though it’s only the males who make the traditional ‘cuck-oo’ call; the females make a distinctive bubbling trill or gurgling call, which is quite different.
We’ll never know whether these are the very same cuckoos that we heard last year, for whilst they may return from Africa to the same general region and breeding area, they don’t rely on a specific nesting territory like many songbirds do. And what’s remarkable is that the juvenile cuckoos migrate alone, not guided by parents, so their return to the breeding grounds is guided solely by instinct. However, the fact that they return year on year to Yr Wyddfa shows that they consider the lower slopes of the massif to be an ideal breeding ground.
Every year the cuckoo can often be heard from the bottom of all the main paths on Yr Wyddfa. This is perhaps not surprising where there are trees around, such as near the Llanberis Path, the Watkin Path, the Rhyd Ddu Path and the Snowdon Ranger Path. More surprising is that the cuckoo can also be heard from Pen y Pass, in Cwm Dyli from the lower Miners’ Track and in the Llanberis Pass from the Pyg Track, despite the dearth of trees in the Pass.
The two months from late April to late June are such a pleasure, and hearing the cuckoo makes my heart sing every time, knowing that we’ve got the best months of the year ahead of us.
Don’t get me wrong; Yr Wyddfa can be stunning in winter, and I’m fortunate enough to be able to pick my days on the mountain. Generally speaking, the whiter and the harsher the better, and in those conditions it’s often hard to imagine a more photogenic mountain. If anything it’s more photogenic in winter than in the summer.
But all in all, summer will always be my favourite season, and I’m sure I’m not alone when every spring I say, “Welcome back, my friend”.