In this immensely engaging book, professional botanist Pete Stroh introduces us to the nature and landscapes on his doorstep. The premise is a straightforward and familiar one, writing in a diary format, the author takes us through the seasons, sharing his experiences of the natural world.
The book begins with Stroh’s rationale for writing it: ‘Discovering what grows and hunts and flies and sings within walking distance of your home is an experience which costs nothing but has the potential to enhance your life and change your world.’ He also shares some rules that he has chosen to define the book’s scope. The diary is to be confined to his home parish, with at least one entry a week which will be written whilst on the spot. The most interesting rule adopted is to ‘restrict grumblings to a minimum, to observe rather than judge.’ As an ecologist Stroh had noticed an increasing tendency on his part to see what was missing rather than what was actually there, to indulge in ‘what if’ thinking – what if herbicides hadn’t been used in that field, what if the mowing regime had been different and so on. There is a risk that this kind of rule might lead to a book that ignores the reality of some of the challenges facing our wildlife but Stroh manages to balance celebrating what he does see with highlighting some of those challenges. This means he can discuss nature recovery when he hears bitterns at former gravel pits which have been flooded and now form a local wetland and Site of Special Scientific Interest, as well as how growing monoculture crops can be balanced with well managed hedgerows and rewilded marginal land.
The parish in question is in rural Northamptonshire (living in a neighbouring county I will admit to being able to identify it) and is home to a diverse mosaic of habitats including a village with two historic churches, a river, water meadows, woodland, gravel pits, hedgerows and mixed farmland. The book begins in April, when Stroh hears the first cuckoo of the year and continues until the cuckoo’s return, a year and three days later. Interspersed with the diary are short entries about the life of the bird that defines the limits of the book. Stroh is a writer who notices things. The changing seasons, light, sounds, smells, colours, even tastes like blackberries, are all precisely described, often in ways that feel fresh and unexpected. Unsurprisingly, given his background, the precision and enthusiasm extend to the informative natural history elements of the book and this is a definite bonus for readers who are keen to learn more about the lives of the plants and other wildlife that he encounters.
The Cuckoo Calls the Year is also about what it means to be rooted in a particular place, Stroh has called Northamptonshire home for over twenty years and clearly knows and understands his patch. There is a particularly evocative passage where he talks about returning home from a holiday in Scotland and having to readjust to a very different landscape, rediscovering the ‘subtle beauty and depth of this familiar landscape’. This sense of rootedness is extended to the excellent choice of Northamptonshire painter and printmaker Carry Akroyd to illustrate the book, and the use of one of John Clare’s poems as the epigraph.
We might not all live in rural parishes with the mix of habitats that the book so beautifully describes but it is nonetheless an inspiring call to discover our own patch and observe what we find there.
The Cuckoo Calls the Year by Pete Stroh was published in May 2025 by Merlin Unwin Books.
Shelly Dennison is a director of JRI, Website Content Creator at CPRE Bedfordshire, the countryside charity, and a freelance writer.