He was complaining. It wasn't summer at all. For he hadn't yet heard the corncrake or the cuckoo and wasn't likely to be anywhere they would be sound ing before they switched off. In fact, the cuckoo was maybe gone by now Sad. Sad. To console him, a friend lent him a copy of Bealoideas, the Journal of the Folklore of Ireland Society of some years back where Sean O Heochaidh had a fine, fanciful piece on the folklore of birds in his part of Donegal.
Here's a scrap or two about the cuckoo and the meadow pipit (Eanna Cuaiche i.e. the bird that follows the cuckoo), which are linked together. When the cuckoo is heard for the first time after its arrival, on its return the following year one will be engaged on the same undertaking. If bent towards the ground, he may be dead when the cuckoo calls the next year.
(There is a lot about birds sounding death knells.) But if the cuckoo's call be heard at night, it foretells an early marriage in the district.
The "sweet" call of the cuckoo is attributed to its eating the eggs of its companion (or host?), and when these are eaten, the cuckoo gets hoarse and leaves the country. Potatoes planted in May are known as cuckoo potatoes. The only child in a family, especially if it is a girl, is called "The Cuckoo's Bird". If the cuckoo calls in the middle of winter, it's a sign of a great change in the world e.g. war in infrequent visitor to a house is greeted with "Welcome, Winter Cuckoo". One should never interfere with a cuckoo in any way. As to the corncrake, you seldom see it in the air and it's difficult enough to see it on the ground, and where you don't see it, you hear it. If you come across a corncrake and it sees no way out, it pretends to be dead.
There's a lot about the heron or crane. The main part is given to the story (of ultimate literary origin, notes the author) where the bird arrives in a wretched state on Iona. It refuses food from all save Colm Cille, to whom it bows its head and bends one of its feet in reverence. Colm Cille rewards the bird by decreeing that the heron can remain standing on one foot longer than all other birds. Oddly, too, he decrees that if the leg bone be inserted in a fiddle, it will improve the musical tone of the instrument. Both the bird and Colm Cille are deeply moved on parting, and all the monks watch the bird until it disappears towards Ireland.
Wonderful flights of imagination, some of it black and forbidding, more of it sprightly, in all the scores of stories of bird folklore.