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Hiking the trail, the birds chirped loudly.

This is the example of the so called Dangling Participle. To improve this sentence it is recommended to transform it in "Hiking the trail, we heard birds chirping loudly". I would like to ask if it would be as well possible just to add the pronoun – Our hiking the trail, the birds chirped loudly.

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Hiking the trail, the birds chirped loudly.

is ambiguous. Most readers would assume someone was hiking on a trail and heard birds, however, the sentence could also be interpreted to mean

The birds were hiking on the trail and chirping loudly.

Adding our, though grammatically correct, is not very useful, since doesn't add anything to the connection of "hiking" and "chirping" which is the intent of the original passage

While we were hiking the trail, the birds chirped loudly.
During our hiking the trail, the birds chirped loudly.

might be better.

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    'During our hiking the trail' is rather clumsy; the first of the two is examples is much better. Apr 24, 2016 at 12:16
  • Yeah, I know, "while" is an easy one and I was trying to think of different example and could only come up with "during".
    – Peter
    Apr 24, 2016 at 21:34

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