Morning bird song?

The sweet sound of bird song waking one on a summer morn is a poetic cliche.

Around here it's a truism that the birds wake me but "sweet" it is not.  About 4:30 that famous early bird seems not to be seeking a worm, Mr Robin Redbreast is shrieking repeatedly, maybe calling his friends and family -- but there is nothing sweet about his shrill call.

4:30!  Yes.  I go to bed early and I wake early but I would not wake that early if it were not for Robin.  As soon as Robin calms down, and possibly goes seeking those famous early worms,
the gulls start in.

A whole colony of gulls live  on the flat roof of my building and they have three adolescent chicks up there (as I'm told by Joe, the handyman who has checked out the situation).  Gulls are not going to win any singing contests either; they sound more like a batch of super loud kittens demanding food.  That is not just three babies I hear, it is the whole colony. 

Joe also tells me that the crows are very interested in the babies.  I think they have infanticide in mind -- and that's what the adult gulls think also. They gang up on the crows and so far have scared them off. 

Now crows are not among my favorite "singers" either.  Until this summer they were my alarm clock, although they had the decency to wait until at least 5:00 before announcing their presence in certain trees to their buddies in certain other trees.  But lately they seem to have settled somewhere else.

Once all this shrieking and mewling begins to quiet, sometimes the LBB and LGBs in the shrubbery have a chance to actually sing a little bit.  (LBB-little brown birds, and the G is for gray  -- I don't know which is what kind of happy little singer),

For unknown reasons the usual gaggle of geese have forsaken our lawn. I have heard no lamentation about their absence. The goose droppings were a mine field in the grass, but the white splats of the geese on our automobiles is equally irksome.  They just "got no couth."