Our friends’ little gardens between the houses in the middle of the village are noisy with birdlife already. Tits, chaffinches, sparrows, robins and blackbirds are hopping and swooping everywhere.
Here in the seclusion of a much bigger garden there is near-silence. A couple of blue tits come to the peanuts in the feeder, a woodpecker cackles and a pheasant shouts. One blackbird sings in the weeping willow but there is hardly any movement in the bushes. I wonder why. And then I realize. There is nowhere in this garden, literally nowhere, that a squirrel can’t reach. Our trees have given them a monopoly; total control. Birds have to go into the village to nest.
