BULLFINCHES are beheading my plum blossom; greenfinches will gorge my pinhead plums, pigeons gulp them pea-size, starlings and blackbirds despoil them ripe. Breeding in neighbouring roofs and Leylandii and snacking ad lib on peanuts and pasta these hit-and-fly epicures swarm like midges.

Rapturous thanks then to correspondent Williams: a sparrow hawk nestbox will secure balanced biodiversity and mute interminable cacophonious twittering, misnamed song, enabling me to slumber through dawn and relish the fruits of my labours.

Can correspondent Turner recommend raptors for Workman Gardens and Abbey Park where gluttonous geese reduce turf to mud, where pigeons roosting atop branch-shedding alien conifers splatter passers-by beneath, where rats scuttle around the misguided feeding Avon's avian five thousand?

Why not restore the Gardens to their Victorian wetland condition, enhanced to sanctuary status? Bourton's free-flying macaws would be over-shadowed by Evesham's giant owls, eagles and vultures. Twitchers could be given planks to walk.

ROBERT THOULD, Hawthorn Road, Evesham.