Robert Browning said in his poem Home Thoughts, From Abroad that in May “the whitethroat builds, and all the swallows!” No doubt he chose the birds because they suited his rhythm and rhymes, but he was right. The countryside is now full of whitethroat song coming from the hedges — a lively but scratchy song, which they sometimes sing while flinging themselves up in the air. These are males courting females, which are also arriving now in large numbers. The male builds deep “cock’s nests” of grass in nettlebeds and brambles, and his mate chooses one and completes it. In the late 1960s there was a collapse in the whitethroat population, after a drought in the scrublands south of the Sahara, where they winter. But their numbers seem to have recovered marvellously.

Swallows are also building, swooping into old barns and outhouses (and even bus shelters and birdwatchers’ hides) with mud and grass, and making their nests on the shadowy rafters.