1 am awoken from deep sleep by Magpie calling from very nearby.

“That’s odd!”

Stupor ensues.

“Owls!” I hear from the edge of perception.

Then there is a clomping down the stair, crash, expletive, flash of light and the sound of a something heavy being moved.

Then I hear it: “Qweeik! Qweeik!” Very loud and very near. There is a chorus of twit-toowooing from all around the rim of the bowl of hills in which we are presently contained. Every urgent, insistent queeik answered by a reassuring, low pitched owly sound from a different direction and each queeik parried by the rattling panic of a magpie.

Now my eyes are open and there is wild illumination from outside the house. Trees flash on and off like Christmas lights; I wonder about hallucinations in confinement — hypnogogic perhaps. Better go with the flow — I rise and grab a dressing gown, descend the stairs in darkness (mustn’t alert whatever it is — that’s odd someones moved the toolbox — I’ve got good night vision). The front door is wide open — I follow the flashes.

The qweeiking and corvid football rattling are unabated and can now be localized to the tall leylandii on the bank just above the house below which a man in a dressing gown and carpet slippers is scanning the tops of the aforementioned trees with the beam of a powerful flashlight.

The sky is clear, crossed by a shooting star. The moon is bright but still quite new so the stars are not so dulled by the moonlight. “Watch out!” calls the man who is hearteningly familiar, “Watch where you step!”

Looking down, there is a middle sized black and white bird sitting at my feet, looking up at me but not moving.

“He’s petrified!”

Now there is a moral dilemma. Farmers hate magpies, I’m not keen on them — they raid nests, eat loads of fledglings, do unspeakable things to defenseless, sick and trapped creatures and desecrate the bodies of the dead (true, they don’t drive to County Durham).

Now the tables are turned: Magpie has met its match. Its nest is under attack by Tawny Owl — female tawny owl egged on (sorry) by male members of her family from a distance (typical) and we feel a wave of sympathy for the magpie mum whose only just fledged baby has parachuted onto the patio and into our protection.

First thing next morning there are no feathers on the ground and later an adult magpie is seen feeding a fledgling in the big pine tree at the other end of the house near to where the baby bird had landed the night before while the other parent feeds its sibling in the leylandii.