I read a few weeks ago in the Okehampton Times of a request for anyone to report to the Dartmoor National Park rangers if they had heard or seen that enigma of a bird, the cuckoo.

On reading this I felt I had to share a most fortunate experience I had only the week before this publication came out.

I’d often heard tales of the Belstone cuckoos, seemingly legendary! One clement evening in June my partner and I were lucky to not only hear them but witness the whimsical whizzing and aerial swoops of a pair of cuckoos.

We had begun a walk away from the village after work. We headed up to the moor following the stream. We chatted during our hike and wondered if we would chance upon such creatures.

Suddenly less than a mile on, we thought we heard their distinctive call. Fearing it was our over-active imaginations we stood in our tracks, transfixed.

Yes. We had caught the distinctive strains of this slightly-at-odds bird. He is a strange mixture of pigeon and sparrow hawk, with dark blue-grey plumage and an erratic flying and landing style, landing on boughs and swooping one after the other to each small tree, silhouetted on the moor horizon.

We headed towards the sounds and were rewarded with the sight of a pair of said birds. They seemed oblivious to us and we crept up to about 100 metres of them, lay low and watched enthralled.

It seems like they ‘cuckoo’ constantly both on the wing and perched. We observed mesmerised for at least 20 minutes, our sense of time and place suspended.

The sky took on a streaked pink appearance and this highlighted their constant acrobatics. Bushes and trees aren’t abundant in that area of Belstone and they made full use of what was available.

Twilight beckoned and they seemed to be guiding us off the moor, continuing to fly ahead of us following the stream until we dropped to lower ground, their calls becoming distant.

Maybe spring came a little late to Belstone and instead of May time we were heralded by them in June.

We are told these birds have suffered a huge decline in recent years so how much more it was a privilege to encounter them on our first visit this year to Dartmoor.

Linda French,

near Cullompton.