Birds

No birds, apart from the occasional robin or blackbird, used to come into my back yard because it is so small and dark.

The people over the back fence (against planning permission, bonfire of rules etc. etc.) built a huge loft extension that stared into my kitchen constantly. I could even see them in bed until I posted a note through their door to tell them, and eventually they put blinds up. I still knew they could peer straight into my house, and so a few years ago I planted a tree- a white birch. Apparently birch trees don't destroy house walls in the ways that other trees do, and they grow quickly as they establish themselves.

It's grown fast and green-leafy, and now my back yard is private. Fleas4U, the neighbourhood Bad Cat, makes rarer and rarer appearances, and now (partly because I have a bird feeder) the garden is full of bossy sparrows who even ask for more seeds by lining up along the gutter and chirruping, and blue tits who have a lovely song. Fat wood pigeons waddle in the ground harvesting the remains that the sparrows have dropped, flustering and flapping off when I go out there to pick the miraculous tomatoes that seem to have managed to grow despite a dearth of daylight.

One bird feeder is susceptible to squirrels, and I put it on the bedroom windowsill. It took the sparrows a long time to (a) find it and (b) work out how to helicopter up to reach it, but sure enough they did. Little packing noises drift in on the early morning air. There was even a scruffy crow there one morning, jabbing at the seeds.

I had to shut the door when I was recording my album because it was so riotously noisy out there, but it was natural noise and I love it!