SUMMER has come. There has been little heat yet but the signs are there.

We have had three mornings on the trot of haar and stillness followed by glorious sunshine and little winds. With the sowing having been so late, no-one can remember when there was so much black ground at this time of year, but it is turning greener by the day.

Where it has not turned yellow, that is. The rape is in full and glorious bloom.

I know a lot of people who hate the rape. They don't like the way this furious yellow has invaded the landscape that used to be so douce in its greens and browns.

I know what they mean and I sympathise but, luckily, the Farmer and his Breadwinner both like the rape.

It is just as well. For Potions, the son-in-law who has taken over the running of the farm, has sown oilseed rape on all four sides of the acre we have kept to ourselves and our retirement house.

When Mossie visited the other day and saw the rape six feet high and creeping up the walls of the bungalow he said: ''What's Potions up to? Is he tryin' to droon ye oot?''

He's welcome to try for we just love it. I have enjoyed the yellow ocean particularly in the early morning when the haar has been in from the North Sea. Ordinarily it would have been dull.

But when you're surrounded by rape in full bloom it's as though the fields were shining up at where the sun should be.

Indeed, I think I prefer the light that comes off the rape to early morning sunshine. The sun is so concentrated and glaring after sleep.

Round our bungalow the early morning light comes from everywhere. So does the sound of birdsong.

And that is a surprise or perhaps a relief. Certainly it is most welcome after the shock I got last summer.

The Farmer was admiring the peas in his garden at the farm when he noticed that there was not a single bird singing.

The air would usually have been filled with an avian cacophony. But there was not a single chirp. The Farmer rushed up to the site of the death house and found that it was the same there - not a cheep.

It didn't seem likely that the reason was chemical; since spring rape went out of fashion we haven't used any insecticides.

There were three obvious suspects.

The first was the cats. We have a particularly talented family of hunting cats who had (without the aid of traps or chemicals) kept the rats at bay for several years.

I had found three chaffinch nests harried by something. But there had always been cats at the farm and there had always been loads of songbirds.

Then there was the recovery of the birds of prey in recent years. When I was a boy a hawk was a thing to be wondered at.

Now, since DDT has been banned they have recovered. They are everywhere. Buzzards abound and eagles and ospreys are spotted by the sharp-eyed as well as the liars.

Birds of prey have certainly been as hard as they can on the wee birds. But they are protected by law and the Farmer couldn't do anything about them.

So, partly by default, blame has settled on the magpies. I remember how excited I was some 30 years ago when the first pair decided to grace Little Ardo with a nest.

By last year there were five nests on the place and every hedge, every tree and our few remaining bits of meadow were being paraded all summer by the marauders looking for eggs.

So on that day, with the peas still a week or so from being ready, a campaign was launched to reduce the population of magpies in hopes of filling the Farmer's retirement with birdsong.

From a fellow farmer (he doesn't want to be named for fear of reprisals from the ''Magpie Liberation Front'' and having a son-in-law who is in the ''Return the Countryside to the Jungle'' campaign) I acquired a most ingenious trap.

And the Farmer has learned something which he should have known all his life.

Despite having sung about them every Christmas as a boy, he had no idea what ''calling birds'' were.

All he knew was that a few of them were worth a try on your true love about the turn of the year.

Well, now I know. They are bait for bird traps.

In my trap there are two chambers. Had it not been so I would have told you. In one chamber you place the calling bird.

There she sits, the magpie Mata Hari, calling the magpie equivalent of ''hiya Big Boy'' or perhaps ''Help! Please help me''.

No sooner had I baited my trap than the siren call was answered.

In comes another magpie and alights on the convenient perch in the open second chamber.

But the perch gives way and a trap door captures the wild bird.

The wages of treachery are two worms for the call girl when I empty the trap.

She seems well pleased and gets on with her work.

That trap worked 47 times last summer. Only one pair returned to breed this year and I shot one of them which made that difficult.

The Farmer feels guilty, of course, but the little birds seem pleased.

The air is alive with the sound of their music.