Everywhere there is bird sign: flickers hammering into telephone poles, puffed-up robins chittering their varied opinions, tits and sparrows chirping as they scatter in clouds of feathers, crows patrolling the curbsides, starlings wolf-whistling from the gutters, chickadees hopping from branch to branch, and soon the finches and later the swallows and lastly the thrushes in the hollows. It is now two weeks before England and all the things that can wait and all the things that can’t wait are lining up for inspection.