Miserable birds making awful noise (4,6)
I believe the answer is:
blue murder
'awful noise' is the definition.
I know nothing about this answer so I can't judge whether this works.
'miserable birds' is the wordplay.
'miserable' becomes 'blue'.
'birds' becomes 'murder' (I can't explain this - if you can you should give a lot more credence to this answer).
'blue'+'murder'='BLUE MURDER'
'making' acts as a link.
Can you help me to learn more?
(Other definitions for blue murder that I've seen before include "Great outcry - horrible din" , "Terrible commotion?" , "racket" .)