WE live beneath a rookery. It's a dangerous place at this time of year. For the last fortnight, the rooks have been viciously vandalising the tree tops, wrenching off long twigs and flapping them unsteadily back towards their nests.

But the twigs are far too long for their beaks. Gravity inevitably takes hold, and a hail of twigs falls on the cars parked underneath.

Then, on Monday, the rooks dropped out of their trees and began bouncing around our garden like teenage hoodlums looking for a fight. Their trousers hitched up above their knees, their beaks as long and frightening as a gangster's knife. Egged on by the nasty little jackdaws who are still too scared to land on the ground, they frighten away the tiny birds and noisily gorge themselves on the bread and cheese and seeds that we throw out.

But rooks are beautiful, their oil slick black feathers revealing a kaleidoscope of colours when the sun catches them.

And then they are off, back to their heights, more dangerous than ever - the change in their diet loosens their insides, and now the cars are covered with unpleasant long streaks and children are too scared to walk the streets.

Still, with some certainty, I can say that, in rook-world at least, spring sprung on Monday.

ON Tuesday came the first scare story of spring. The British ladybird, waking up with the warmth, is under threat from an invader.

There are 46 species of ladybird in Britain. The most common has seven black spots on a red background. The average seven-spotter eats 5,000 aphids in its year-long lifetime - ancient farmers hailed it as a crop saviour and named "Our Lady's Beetle", after the Virgin Mary.

It is an international connection: the French call them "les vaches de la Vierge" (cows of the Virgin), and the Germans call them "Marienkafer" (Mary's beetles).

There is an international rhyme, too. In France, Germany, Italy, Switzerland, Denmark and Sweden, children sing versions of:

Ladybird, ladybird, fly away home,

Your house is on fire and your children are gone,

All except one and that's little Ann,

For she crept under the frying pan.

This is supposed to be a warning to the ladybird about end-of-season crop burning - little Ann being the ladybird's pupae stuck to the stalks and so unable to escape the flames.

But through France, Belgium and the Netherlands in recent years has stomped the harlequin ladybird. There are 5,200 species of ladybird in the world, and the harlequin hails from Asia. It was introduced into North America and northern Europe 20 years ago as a natural form of pest control, and has already become the most common ladybird there.

Since September in the South-East, it has been over here. It is bigger and rounder than our ladybird. Orange rather than red, with 15 to 20 black blotches.

And it is voracious. It eats up all the aphids before the British ladybird is awake, and then turns on its host.

A survey is being conducted at www.harlequin-survey.org to find out how far the invader has spread. But it seems that it is only a matter of months before it reaches the North-East, and our spring will never be the same again.