This morning, while walking the dogs, I heard the cuckoo for the first time this year. They are back from Africa.
I got tears in my eyes. The first call of the cuckoo moves me deeply every year. This is because my friend Bertus and I always had a fun cuckoo match. The one who heard the cuckoo first called the other and told where the cuckoo had been heard and at what time, supplemented by meteorological conditions.
Bertus was blind from the age of 20. I met him when he was in his late 70s. We cycled around every week on the tandem. His interest in almost everything was enormous and inspiring. I learned a lot while biking with him.
On the bike, I looked around for him. He always had questions about nature: ‘Do the storks have young yet? Or are they still breeding?’ He wanted to know about the fields: “How big are the potato leaves by now?” Every spring, he asked me to count the lapwings. ‘I hear the lapwings, can you please count and tell me how many are flying?’
Because of him, I have a much stronger sense of the seasons. I feel how special it is that we have four seasons around here.
Bertus passed away in 2020, at the age of 86. His memory is in many things, especially in the first call of the cuckoo every year.

In the photos: Bertus and a somewhat poor photo of a cuckoo.