Earlier hedge-cutting will condemn many birds to an early death

LAST YEAR the company that collects my rubbish stopped doing so. When I phoned them to ask why, they said the driver of the bin lorry had objected to having his vehicle damaged by overgrown hedges.

I admitted to living down a long, narrow lane-way lined by rather magnificent hedges. I put down the phone and considered my options.

In the end I reluctantly got the permission of the landowners concerned and paid a considerable sum of money to a man who owned a tractor-mounted hedge-cutting machine. Luckily this happened in the autumn when it’s legal to cut hedges.