The time is fast approaching when our Airbnb, nailed to the side of the garden shed, will be available to rent. Returning home through the field recently, I could hear a chorus of chirping from the blue-tit chicks inside. The past few days their parents have been running an exhausting Deliveroo service. Whenever they emerge on another foray, the volume of cheeping rises, like Oliver Twist hollering for more.

It seems that spending spring and early summer in lockdown has turned the country into a nation of bird lovers. It’s not just in the countryside that they have become a large part of our lives, a source of diversion, fascination and even, or so I have felt, of company. Stepping outside in the morning is like entering the Usher Hall during warm-up, a discordant and energetic orchestra of flutes, pipes and trumpets. As I brush my teeth, I sometimes see Wilf, the blackbird with the silver ankle ring, by the chimney, letting the wind ruffle his feathers. He has a very keen look, and when our eyes meet, you feel you have been noted. By evening, his spot is taken by a pair of turtle doves which perch side by side on the TV aerial, well camouflaged against the dusky sky.

Alan saw Wilf enjoying a bath in a puddle the other day, near his HQ, in the centre of the village. On our first social gathering in months – a glass of wine in a neighbour’s garden one warm evening – Wilf landed on the lawn beside us, hopping behind our chairs, and unperturbed by our friends’ inquisitive dog. Clearly he considers every garden to be his private food department. Theirs is Fortnum and Mason to our Lidl.

A barn owl has been seen in the village lately, out hunting before dark. The photos show a beautiful, ghostly creature with a heart-shaped pale face, after which Hoolet is named. It was gliding low between trees and across the edge of rough fields. I hope it kept its distance from the blue tits, because other birds’ chicks are the perfect snack for owls and their owlets. That comes as little surprise, but it wasn’t till recently that I learned that the woodpeckers haunting our garden might be lingering near the nestbox in hope of a tasty snack. A large one had taken up position on the gatepost, a few days ago, within earshot of the nest. Squirrels, meanwhile, are the stuff of blue tits’ horror movies. They have been known to gnaw away at a nestbox entrance to reach the birds inside.

The charm most of us find in bird life and nature is often a rose-tinted perspective. For birds, every day is a challenge, a survival exercise tougher than anything the SAS could conceive. Often I’ll see the older blue tits, decidedly dishevelled, stuffing themselves on our peanut feeders as they boost their blood sugar levels ahead of another caterpillar hunt. Occasionally a scattering of feathers in the flowerbeds indicate where a cat has brought down a weary or unwary bird. The RSPB says that the avian massacre by cats – estimated to be over 27 million a year – is a natural winnowing, with only the weak or ill falling prey. I’m not convinced. It sounds like a half-truth, aimed to prevent all-out conflict between bird and feline lovers. Not that the two are mutually exclusive.

Danger is all around, if you’re small and feathered. Friends were out for a walk beyond Hoolet recently, and spotted a flock of sparrows, feeding on grass-heads. Suddenly, not six feet away from them, a sparrowhawk swooped and snatched one of the birds. The speed of the attack, and the hawk’s audacity, were startling.

Nor was this a first sighting of this turbo-charged predator that moves at the speed of a bullet. Occasionally I catch one diving between our house and a neighbour’s garden. As it flashes past the kitchen window, you know this is no idle reconnaissance. From its perch high in the sycamore, it has spied something delicious. The best you can hope is that, for the creature caught in its crosswires, the end is mercifully swift.

With less traffic, you see far fewer birds flattened on the roads, especially pheasants, which usually seem positively eager to examine the chassis of approaching cars. Our neighbours were nevertheless worried that they’d found a pegged-out pheasant among their poppies. Hearing them calling to us through the beech hedge – by now almost as impenetrable as the Berlin Wall – we hurried over to offer first-aid if required.

The glittering, fearless – and pea-brained? – beauty, which has been parading our gardens since springtime, was far from dead. It had simply settled itself into an earthy dip to enjoy the sun. This would explain the dusty hollows I’ve been finding of late in the shrubbery, as if an easter egg-sized UFO had landed. Unfazed by the humans clucking anxiously around it, the pheasant only roused itself and got to its feet when it heard us approaching on the gravel.

Another frequent visitor is the young hedgehog which has taken to walking up the road to the house, around tea-time, and disappearing into the back garden. Seeing it approach, I stuck my head out of the door into the pouring rain, and noticed it has a limp. Seen from behind, it lurched on one hind leg, like a trolley with a wonky wheel. Since it was going at a lick, and obviously knew exactly where it was heading, I left it to get on with it.

It’s a matter of days before the blue tits will be out of their nest, and bouncing around the garden. In a second-hand bookshop last year I found a guide to making your garden more bird friendly. In a chapter on building nestboxes for different species, it advised that, after the breeding season, these boxes must be cleaned, to protect future broods from disease. This must be how landlords feel when the end of a tenancy is approaching. The need to disinfect is clearly universal. Unique to providers of avian accommodation, however, is the warning to brace yourselves for finding addled eggs, or the remains of chicks that failed to thrive. You can be sure this task will fall to me.

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