Note on August hoopoes
August 7th, 2008 | Written by Lucy Brzoska |No sign of any hoopoes, young or old. I was beginning to wonder if the nest had been deserted. No doubt I looked eccentric, sitting on the ground, staring at a tree for an hour. But another individual came along and outdid me in strangeness.
Nattily dressed for such a hot day, he was wearing a crisp orange shirt, brown trousers belted high and a blue beret positioned in horizontal perfection. He approached the hoopoe tree but wasn’t interested in the nest. Instead, he held up a tape recorder and recorded the cicadas singing. Satisfied, he played it back and went on his way.
Immediately, a hoopoe nestling peered out of the hole. This second clutch of mid-summer will have grown listening to the relentless orchestra of cicadas - briefly intensified by the man in the blue beret.
