Early one Spring morning Marty and I were awakened, well before our alarms were set to go off I might add, by a persistend pecking sound on our bedroom window. Obviously, we were annoyed by this and after about 30 minutes, we had concluded that it was a bird. This bird would latch onto the screen (which we could hear), scratch it's claws against the glass part of the window (which still causes me to cringe), then release from the screen and fly straight into the upper portion of the window....repeat times a million. The next morning, it started again...and the next morning...and the morning after that.
I finally resorted to the master of all researchers for things of such a bizarre nature-Google. According to all the professionals on the World Wide Web, we were smack dab in the middle of bird mating season. You see, birds are very territorial animals during such a time. Our lovely little wren was seeing his reflection in the window, assuming it was another bird and attacking it. And thus began the trial and error portion of this story. We tried everything we could think of or read about on the internet to get this bird to give it up already!! I printed a picture of a cat to put in the window-that worked for about a minute. I put CDs in the window (the sun would reflect off of them and keep birds away)-that worked a little better during the day, but didn't help at all during the early morning hours. Finally, we ended up with a contraption that I'm sure came straight from the Beverly Hillbillies. I'm kicking myself now becuase I didn't take a picture of it and any description I give can't possibly do it justice. We had the window completely covered on the inside (fabric, blinds and 2 sets of curtains). There were 2 CDs wedged in the top of the window. There was a trash bag taped, with packing tape, to the top part of the window. And there was 2 pieces of cardboard taped to the bottom part of the window between the window and the screen. It was ugly as anything, but let me tell you right now...it worked!! We were finally able to sleep in again and the little wren could finally regain any sanity he lost by beating himself up on our window for 2 weeks straight!
About a month after that, Marty was out of town for a conference, and I had gone to stay with my mom for a night. I was gone for about 24 hours and came home to this on the back stoop...
Yes, that's bird poop and this picture certainly doesn't do the damage justice. What you don't see is that it's also covering our door mat, and the surrounding areas of the carport. YUCK!!!
And if you think this was bad enough, check out the sliding glass door...
I finally resorted to the master of all researchers for things of such a bizarre nature-Google. According to all the professionals on the World Wide Web, we were smack dab in the middle of bird mating season. You see, birds are very territorial animals during such a time. Our lovely little wren was seeing his reflection in the window, assuming it was another bird and attacking it. And thus began the trial and error portion of this story. We tried everything we could think of or read about on the internet to get this bird to give it up already!! I printed a picture of a cat to put in the window-that worked for about a minute. I put CDs in the window (the sun would reflect off of them and keep birds away)-that worked a little better during the day, but didn't help at all during the early morning hours. Finally, we ended up with a contraption that I'm sure came straight from the Beverly Hillbillies. I'm kicking myself now becuase I didn't take a picture of it and any description I give can't possibly do it justice. We had the window completely covered on the inside (fabric, blinds and 2 sets of curtains). There were 2 CDs wedged in the top of the window. There was a trash bag taped, with packing tape, to the top part of the window. And there was 2 pieces of cardboard taped to the bottom part of the window between the window and the screen. It was ugly as anything, but let me tell you right now...it worked!! We were finally able to sleep in again and the little wren could finally regain any sanity he lost by beating himself up on our window for 2 weeks straight!
About a month after that, Marty was out of town for a conference, and I had gone to stay with my mom for a night. I was gone for about 24 hours and came home to this on the back stoop...
Yes, that's bird poop and this picture certainly doesn't do the damage justice. What you don't see is that it's also covering our door mat, and the surrounding areas of the carport. YUCK!!!
And if you think this was bad enough, check out the sliding glass door...
No, that's not paint on the door. Those would be marks where a bird was repeatedly flying into the window. Apparently, the bird would sit on the stoop, see it's reflection in the door, fly into the door and literlly beat the poop out of itself. Neat.
Our little wren friend wasn't the culprit this time. We had a different attackee on our hands...a Red-Breasted Robin. So, in an effort to keep the bird from seeing it's reflection in the door and to keep from causing another portion of our house to be blocked off by trash bags and cardboard, I started keeping the curtains closed all day, which caused a darker interior, but much less mess!
And the bird must have really been out to get us, becuase this is what happened next...
The bird would sit on our retaining wall and relieve itself (multiple times) before launching off the wall and flying straight for the driver's side window of my car. It would hit the window, fly away, come back to the car, perch on the side mirror or ledge beside the window, poop and then do it all over again.
So, in order to keep my car from looking like this every day, I had to put a towel over the driver's side window every single morning.
When I started this blog a few years ago, I never thought I'd be posting pictures of bird poop. Nor did I ever think that I would look out the back window to see my husband sitting on the retaining wall with a bebe gun trying to keep birds away. However, I figure that spending this many hours observing birds' activities and researching ways to combat such activity was blog worthy. So, the moral of the story is, birds are persistent...and messy.
1 comment:
Hi Sarai! I'm just getting into the swing with my blog. Yours is great! I was definitely lol with this bird story. You are missed!
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