Birds are back in many parts of the river basin.
The birds are back in woods behind my house.
The birds are back three days earlier than they were the year before.
9.58am BST Preamble The clocks have gone forward, mornings are light, the birds are back with their aggravating racket; it's spring.
The cages now stand empty, the birds are back from the brink, but without the forest cover they will always be vulnerable.
Before long, the birds are back in their yard, vanishing up the ramp to their house, all but the roosters, who keep a wary eye out until the flock is in.
"That's a chick that fledged here -- a Cooper product, back in the 'hood!" After three nights alone on the island, George is delighted that his birds are back.
The oil, on which the Rayburn runs, is low and the delivery tanker can't get up the track to top us up, but the birds are back in the garden: blackbirds and thrushes are busy clearing snow off the last of the windblown apples and the tits have stripped the holly tree of berries.
Within a week of our arrival, Cooper Island has lost much of its snow cover, the shoreline is beginning to emerge from its nine-month encasement in the sea ice and the mass of birds is back -- some 235 black guillemots set to breed in the dark cavities of the rusted 55-gallon drums and destroyed ammunition boxes littered across the flank of Cooper Island.
Now that the birds are back, George picks up his pace, walking all night in the wind and rain, taking detailed notes of which birds have returned, which nest sites are occupied, who is mating with whom -- all written into one of his yellow field journals with a pen taped to a footlong tent stake, the better to manipulate it while wearing two pairs of gloves.
