I should know better

It`s that time of year. Baby birds everywhere, twittering and cheeping at the birdfeeders, often escorted by a proud parent. How cute, you think?

Not always.

I was disturbed yesterday by an outbreak of raucous cawing and screeching - I`d been hearing something of the kind in the distance for some time but this was uncomfortably close to home. I ran out.

Old Celeste had been sunbathing in a little run beside the garage. The sides were only 4 feet high, but with her arthritis she wasn`t going anywhere.

Now she was crouched in the dead centre of it. Perched round the sides were three enormous crows, two of them screaming loudly. They were about as big as she was. She shot me a look that would have frozen hell. Clearly she thought she had been offered as some sort of sacrifice like the goat tethered out to fetch the tiger.

But it was quite clear what was going on. I had stumbled on a tender parental moment. The moment at which a mother takes a good hard look at her baby boys and decides that enough is enough.

There she perched, with two offspring as big as she was, begging to be fed. She hopped off, and gave them an unimstakeable look ;

"You`ve turned out just like your father - heaven knows what I ever saw in him - a pair of lazy useless big buggers! Away and work!"

Off she flew, pursued by the two huge gawky misfits. I could hear the sounds of the pursuit echo round the wood all afternoon. The resident crow, Jim, who seems to be a confirmed bachelor, hid behind the chimney and was probably becoming more confirmed by the moment. The dogs, their dreams of crow dinner revived, answered the screeches loudly. And Celeste intimated that she wasn`t talking to me, ever..

A quiet day in the country...