It's the persistent tap-tapping of a long-tailed tit at his study window.
A bat flew through his study window, prompting him to muse: "Criminals are a cowardly and superstitious bunch.
Swindon lost to Oldham Athletic and, as I looked out on the County Ground's floodlights from my study window, I reflected on the result with a shrug.
Minton looked out his study window and watched a family of four deer that had made its way into the back yard.
The last especially: foxes often come up to my study window and peer in, and one of Paula's pictures shows a fox at my desk busily writing.
Around Christmas, a neighbor stopped by and spied her through the study window: she was staring vacantly at her computer's mouse.
Here in Washington, the Kennedy Center, visible from my study window, feels as much an established marble fact as the Lincoln Memorial, a few blocks away.
Bumblebees tap against my windows, pheasants croak their way across my front garden and lambs play together in the field I can see from my study window.
Poring over data from an 18-year study window, the researchers found that 2,278 of the men developed Type 2 diabetes.
The writer remembers the view from the vicarage study window, "the yew, the bushes where we played jungles, the huge copper beech, the conker tree, and... a stream where I'd catch minnows in Lucozade bottles baited with bread".
Climb the stairs to his front door and you're ushered into an aspicked slice of 1960s west London, complete with radiant gas fire and an exuberant cheese which presses up against the study window, casting an underwater glow.
