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I’m not sure if we have cuckoos here. But there is a bird that flys from New Guinea every spring to lay its eggs in the nests of other birds. It’s called a Koel, and it is in the cuckoo family. It has the most haunting call, early morning. I love it.

https://birdlife.org.au/bird-profiles/eastern-koel/

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So many references here I find a kinship with. My pottery mark is a spiral, which I’ve used for decades.

I have a rolling stamp for pottery marking, one of two chosen by my husband, that makes a similar pattern to the Bronze Age beaker.

The Cuckoo festivals. I had to check what cuckoos we have in Canada, as I wasn’t sure I had specifically heard one. We have the black-billed and yellow-billed cuckoo. Would my Cornish DNA recognise the European cuckoo?

Like you, from a young age I had the recipe books and the desire to make food memories from the old celebrations endure.

I am reminded yet again that I must get a copy of Martyrs, Maypoles and Mayhem!

Thank you for the lovely read.

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Oh Elizabeth, what a lovely comment of kinship, even though continents divide us! I wonder whether ‘your’ cuckoo’s call is identical to ours? As I write this reply it’s 23 April, the very date on which I’ve first heard it in the past, but sadly not today. I always remember because it’s Shakespeare’s birth and death day, and somehow it seems appropriate to mark the Bard’s special day with that evocative sound!

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