Dawn Chorus

It's very leafy where I live, especially at this time of year. We have a hedge around all three sides of our garden, which includes hazel, holly, beech and laurel. There are also many trees in our garden: a flowering cherry and a fruiting plum, a silver birch and a weeping birch, a red sycamore and several young apple trees. The surrounding gardens also have a variety of trees: from my office window I can see a willow, a copper beech and a Scots pine.

This means the area is a Mecca for birds. They nest in the hedges, the trees and the eaves of the houses. We have blackbirds and wood pigeons, song thrushes and great tits, blue tits and chaffinches, starlings and sparrows, robins and wrens. We also have rarer visitors passing through such as goldfinches, nuthatches and, once, a lesser spotted woodpecker.

My bedroom window opens onto the garden. In the spring and summer I'm happy to be woken by birdsong. As I sit here now I can hear a woodpigeon cooing, a blackbird trilling, a chaffinch chirping and, in the distance, a disgruntled crow cawing as if to protest the early hour.

I love the great range of sounds made by our British birds. But I would happily strangle the raucous feathered hooligan who has learned to be a perfect mimic of a car alarm.