Woodpigeons are clattering around in the cherry tree

In the spare room to avoid disturbing other Foxgloves in the small hours when I have to get started, I settle into an unfamiliar bed.

Outside, woodpigeons are stumbling and clattering about in the cherry tree, rippling coos bubbling through the leaves, counterpointed by the three-beat coo of the collared doves further down the garden.

Above my window, the elder tree fills the warm, still evening air with scent, civet and honeydew, punctuated with the last of the hawthorn blossom on the other side.

A crack against the window-pane, followed by a crispy buzz, tells me that a cockchafer has flown into it and fallen on the sill: yes, there it is, upside down and helpless, looking like an elongated hazelnut with tufts of cream fluff.

I pick it up, marvelling at its complex beauty, before setting it right way up on to the ivy.

This is the ivy in which the wren has built a nest, and I can now tell you that this tiny bird can make the devil of a racket when it is going to bed.

Down in the hedge, the blackbirds pink-pink-pink to a prowling cat. If it walks down the fenceline, the terrier will comment - yes, there she goes.

Back in bed, pillows re-plumped, the spreading dusk darkens, and the birds fall silent one by one, until only the blackbird is left, singing a glorious evensong.

Soon, that is at an end too, and just on the edge of sleep, I catch a swishing in the wheatfield followed by a yikkering of fox cubs out marauding.

My deerhound cross booms a huge deep bark in their direction: ever economical with her voice, she is quiet after the initial challenge, but the terrier takes up a cracked falsetto until I lean out of the window and suggest that she stops now.

I can hear the foxes' progress, as the dogs further along the lane take up the baton, one after the other, barking them all the way to the green.

Now something is disturbing the horses at livery at the other end of the village. Sound carries well on the night air, and I can hear their thumping hoofbeats and snorting. What is troubling them?

Fortunately it is soon over, before I decide to get dressed again and go to see.

They are not my horses, but we all help each other out when we can.

Sinking into rest again, I am shocked into wakefulness by, of all things, a firework display, and very noisy it is too. Luckily there is only about half an hour of it, but by the end there seems to be a dog on the bed too.

There is a mosquito zinging, just within my range of hearing, and when the noise stops, I suspect it is feasting upon me somewhere I will only find later.

It is properly dark now, and the household is still. In the distance,

I now hear poultry in a turmoil, hens cackling a staccato alarm and ducks blaring like car horns.

Then there is one very loud bang, and silence.

Justice has been done, I think. The dog curls in closer, and I suspect sleep will not now be far away.