Hedge pruning

Next door's escalonia hedge is about twelve foot high and is shading the back garden so before the birds start nesting in it Mike has trimmed the top couple of feet off it.  There are lots of sparrows in the thick bottom part of it, but the spindly top part only seems to serve as a night time roost for several pheasants!  Walking Lottie last thing at night I quite often startle them, although I don't know who is more startled, them or me!  

The cable which look perilously close to Mike's head and the strimmer are only phone cables, rather than electricity wires, but from the angle I was looking from it was a bit worrying!  I was supposed to be holding onto the ladder, but I had to leave go in order to get a photo . . . !