I never thought I’d say this, but I shall be relieved once the Summer Solstice is over next week and the nights start drawing in again. I really enjoy the light evenings, and it’s so much less depressing in the summer when I can go to work and come home in daylight, rather than in the dark. Even the regular early-morning trips to our Hampshire office (at least weekly occurrences at the moment) are somehow more bearable when they happen in daylight. But it is getting light quite ridiculously early at the moment, and that’s causing me problems. Not the sunlight itself, as I have good blackout lining on my bedroom curtains. Rather, it’s the associated dawn chorus that is causing me grief.
It started at 04:29 this morning. I know, because it woke me up! There is one particular bird who has clearly decided that the fence post on the new terracing directly outside my bedroom window is the ideal place from which to mark his territory. For what is presumably a small song-bird, he has got the most incredibly loud voice, and is very, very persistent – he can, and does, sing for what seems like hours at a time! Then he seems to get into a slanging match with another bird, and the two of them duet ad nauseam. I’m not sleeping too well at the moment anyway, and could really do without being woken up at quite literally the crack of dawn by a bloody bird. At least the recent spell of atrocious weather means that I’ve been sleeping with the window closed, so that the double glazing muffles the sound a bit. It was even more unbearable in the warmer spell a few weeks back when I was sleeping with the window open!
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I feel your pain. Out here we have some variety of bird whose song is very simple – a single, short “eep!” – which also happens to be EXTREMELY loud. Said bird, like yours, wakes up at dawn.
*sigh*
Some foam earplugs might be helpful. They’ve enabled me to salvage some sleep in noisy hotel room on several occasions, though they may not be quite so effective against high-pitched birdsong…
some of the sodding birds wake up around 04:00 hrs round here, pigeons are the worse, it sounds like their stripping the tiles off the roof their so fat.
There is a pair of particularly plump pigeons here who have taken to sitting on top of my chimney pot and cooing loudly at each other. The sound then reverberates down my chimney and it sounds as if they’re in the living room shouting at me! They strut around the garden as if they own it and look very annoyed at being disturbed if I should have the temerity to open my own front door!
How about a water pistol (for the one directly outside your window, at least)?