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Nature is beginning to show its summery face, and so it is in bird life too. There is still plenty of singing everywhere, but less and less of it in daytime. The birds who started nesting early haven’t any time left for spinning melodies, for them a heavily duty-laden period in life has begun – getting their young ready for an independent life. Even in northern Estonia a host of young crows, jackdaws, magpies, starlings, thrushes and many other species have left their nests in the first days of June and ever more are joining them.

Irretrievably many young are lost during the first weeks in life. In places where the density of the bird population is particularly great and species that harass each other live side by side, the emergence of a new generation makes bird life very tense. The city is one such place where the delicate natural balance has been upset. In Tallinn for instance a constant war between thrushes, crows and herring gulls goes on, and when moreover a number of people live in the same area, and dogs and cats too, the situation runs out of control even more. The numbers of hooded crows, gulls and blackbirds and fieldfares breeding in the capital are much larger than assumed earlier and so it happens that we – peace-loving humans – are attacked with seemingly mindless aggression. It can happen anywhere – in parks, your own garden, in a street. And the reason is always that somewhere nearby their offspring are busy or that a lonely silly little chick totters around, without much grasp of the ways or dangers of the world. So the adult birds lose their nerve even more and attack, sometimes haphazardly, any live beings that they think might be dangerous.