To want to take a shotgun to the dawn chorus?

[cestlavie]

I mean I'm sure it heralds the start of spring and the wondrous cycle of life but if I hear the feathery little gits start their tweet, tweet, bloody tweet one more time I'm seriously visiting www.shotgunsrus.com soon as I log on.

Every bloody morning for the last two weeks, 4.30am they kick off. By 4.45am DD2 (4 months) is awake and whimpering cos she's absolutely shattered but can't get back to sleep, passing quickly into despairing wails. 4.50am she's in our room. 5.00am DD1 is up and asking why DD2 is crying. By about 5.15am DD1 is persuaded that it's not actually time to get up yet and goes back to her room by herself (with drink) to sleep. By 6.00am DD2 is even more shattered and the birds are still bloody warbling and eventually passes out about 6.15am in time for DD1 to get up at start out day.

I wouldn't care but we live in bloody London - we're not meant to wake to the sounds of birds, we're meant to wake to the every day sounds of sirens, bin lorries and taxi flyers through our letter box that the kids are used to. And seriously, what are these birds using? A loud hailer? A stadium amp? How do such tiny little things make so much noise?
Aaaarrrrgghhhh!

Do you have double glazing ? I am amazed it's so loud. Get earplugs!

Are you sure they aren't vultures?

YABU totally I'm afraid

At least yours go "tweet tweet" -we've got one loud, tuneless fecker round here that drowns out the tweets with his/her impression of some sort of alarm.

(We're semi-rural)

unfortunately cestlavie.....er C'est la vie

oh and pmsl at "if I hear the feathery little gits start their tweet..."

YABU - the bird population in this country is endangered - be grateful, you'll miss it one day...

No - no double glazing - am considering all manner of weird sound proofing ideas though.

And whilst I'll no doubt miss it one day and find it really hard to imagine right now! (Besides, they're probably London pigeons - i.e. rats with wings)

Think it's the age your little ones are at probably that is making it worse.

It seems hard to believe wild birds are fewer in numbers as I swear they get louder every year, but now my kids are older (DD is 8), they snore through the cacophony (or perhaps wake up, think, it's only the birds, turn over and go to sleep again).

I just stick my earplugs in.

I'll swap/swop (how the hell do you spell this word?) your tweeting birds for my DS2 OP. He sounds like an asthmatic strangulated cat from 4am every morning.

I have massive sympathy for your unfairly woken rage though.

It is wrong to use ear plugs on a 4 month old, right?

It is hard to be calm and considered at 4.30am in the morning when the tweet factory starts up...

YABU. I love the dawn chorus. But then I also love getting up obscenely early and dawn is my favourite time of day.

Oh its so nice to meet a fellow London that feels the same way! DH thinks I'm a lunatic for disliking those damn birds but he wears earplugs cos of my snoring.

YANBU at all. There's a bird around here that makes this tuneless screet-screet sound from around 4am.

I even listened to an RSPB birdsong selection in a foiled attempt to identify the little bastard. I know it won't do me any good but I just want to be able to put a face to my enemy.

They were singing here the other night at 2am? What the hell is that about. Do we have vampire birds?

Some birds particularly blackbirds (and possibly robins and song thrushes?) become confused by artifical street lighting and can sing at all hours of the night. Could've been a nightingale though?

Pheasants screeching at nightfall scare the beejeezers out of me and so do foxes calling to their mates.

We have an owl that sits on a telegraph pole at the bottom of teh garden and calls to it's mate.

Very soon the swifts will arrive and as much as I love them because they indicate summer's nearly here they are noisy little bastards.

YANBU. Wood pigeons are the worst - that mindless "coo coo-coo". Want to shoot 'em all!

YANBU however i'll swap your 4.30 am tweets for my 3.30am fox cubs play fighting under the car. It sounds like 100 cats being strangled.

No, definitely not a nightingale. Just bog standard starlings and a blackbird or two by the sounds of it. Perhaps they're planning to take over the world.

I'll take the fox cubs. They are so cute.

Want me to send dp over Sweetum? He often goes pigeon shooting.

yabu....it's one of the best sounds in the world imo..

I might be a bit if I were in London but I love the sound of birds singing in the early morn and in the evening! Just wish I was living in the country as it would be lovely to hear only that and not the thumping music of ignorant louts or the shrieks of drunks!

The dawn feckin' chorus in the tree outside our house POOPED ALL OVER MY NEWLY WASHED CAR this morning, the little bleeders.

passes air rifle to cestlavie

YANBU - my DH was trying to bribe the cat to catch the blackbird singing outside our window at 4am. A week of tuna.......but the cat just sits there

Blackbirds, they will start the dawn chorus at around 3am.

Years ago, worked in an all-night petrol station, switch the canopy lights on (roof over the pumps) and birds fly in and start singing from midnight.

Get cats.