Zoë Devlin

I stood, my head at an angle, craning to hear what the others were listening to.

No matter how hard I tried, I could not hear it.

They were nodding their heads, smiling at the recognition of this feathered visitor's voice.

Yes, that's it.

But the satisfaction and delight on hearing the first cuckoo was denied to me that year as spring unfolded like the ferns along our walk.

I just couldn't hear it.

Sound, noise, echo, resonance, rustle, roar, scrunch, scrape, squeak, call, cry, bleat.

Each of those words are connected by something most of us take for granted, the sense of hearing.

So much of nature is absorbed, not always consciously, through our ears.

With my eyes closed, I could detect the buzz of summer insects, a picture painted by the sound of bumblebees rattling up and down the fingers of a foxglove.

By the sea, I could hear the lapping of the tide curling on the fudge-like sand at the water's edge.

I could hear the croaking of a frog, the plop as it dives into water, ripples widening to a wake of infinity.

I recall the sound of a baby seal crying for its mother, a melancholy wail cutting through the air, and the blood-curdling howl of a vixen screeching for her mate in the deep of the night.

When I'm in woodland, I'm reminded of the poet John Clare, who used a beautifully onomatopoeic word, southering, to describe the sighing of the wind through the trees.

In autumn, the desiccating leaves do a discreet tango to the Latin beat of the wind.

Sometimes it's the sound of those dry leaves crunching underfoot, or the first few splashes of rain hitting them, a prelude to an unexpected cloudburst.

Often it is the grating rasp of a pair of branches rubbing together like two old friends, supported by a continuo of woodland birds.

The cuckoo, the chiff-chaff, the peewit all have names coined to echo their calls.

Other avian sounds I could never bear to lose are the haunting call of the curlew or the robin's scratchy cry.

All of these are notes of music to my ears.