Country diary: Bedfordshire

The sound of this summer comes down the chimney, through the open windows and over the rooftops into our garden. It demands attention, like a child yelling: "Si-ir!" from the back of the classroom. I rush outside, as I always do, in time to hear it again – "Pee-eep!" If I did not know better, I would eye the likely suspects. A jackdaw performs a rollicking tightrope walk along the ridge tiles opposite. A gull swoops archly to the left. A tight knot of starlings make for the limes, bunching and bunching still more tightly. But these are just sideshows before the main act. The sound issues every three or four seconds, each time growing louder and more insistent. At last, the loudest note of all brings the peeping perpetrator directly overhead. The drawings in a field guide of a black and white bird might confuse, because, looking from below, I see a bird that is white. A pale shape against a pale blue sky, it appears to do no more than waggle its wing tips. The lazy appearance is deceptive, for this is a light missile, and strong wing beats carry it speedily and directly out of sight. The air traffic this summer suggests very strongly that oystercatchers have had an unprecedented breeding season along the Ivel Valley, for I have heard and seen, as never before, ones, twos or threes passing overhead several times a day. So many of these aural encounters have been memorable. Last week, over a meadow by the millrace, one exited left, pursued by a crow, issuing an agitated stream of peeps. Early one morning, a trio swirled round and round over Sandy town centre, as if waiting, like me, for the bakery to open. But these birds are mussel-bound. At the onset of the school holidays, the oystercatchers are preparing to head for the seaside, to seek out the shellfish-filled mud of an estuary, where they will spend the winter. I hear the last toot of the departing bird and know that the impending absence will make me long for the spring return of this pied piper.