Good Birds Gone Bad

This peeve will undoubtedly reveal me as the true curmudgeon that I am, in case that wasn’t clear before. Here, I am actually complaining about birds and their sweet little chirping.

When I was a toddler, my parents claim that I would wake up bright and early and say cheerfully, “The birds are singing to me!”

Well, Curly isn’t quite the eager morning person anymore, but I have no problem with birds singing in the morning or during the day. However, the birds who live outside my bedroom window chirp at odd times, namely in the middle of the night.

When you’re trying to sleep and it is dark outside, the loud, joyful noises that the birds make can suddenly seem creepy, menacing, and very, very annoying. At two or three in the morning, you do not feel that these birds are singing to you. On the contrary, you feel they are deliberately taunting you with their happiness, knowingly keeping you awake.
Half-asleep, you start to imagine that you are in a bad remake of a Hitchcock film.

What are these birds doing during the witching hours? Why are they singing when all respectable little birds should be in bed? Why have these good birds gone bad?

--Curly