THE SPECKLED song thrush darts through the garden like a young trout through water. Spotting a stalk of last year’s grass, she seizes it and shoots into the hedge. The nest is coming on slowly – day three and it might take three weeks to finish. No botched, cowboy-builder job thrown together in an afternoon, a song thrush’s nest is an elegant bowl of twigs, grass and moss, glazed and glued together with mud and dung. Leaves and rotten wood are added for comfort. The same nest can be used for up to three successive broods. As she lovingly nest-builds, her partner’s job is to sing from our cherry tree and be a decoy. The moment the thrushes showed their faces in the garden, the resident blackbird began harassing them. To leave the female free to build her nest in the