The Bird From Hitchcock!
Two weeks ago I posted a story here about the Noisy Miner bird that was attacking its reflection in one of our windows. I tried scaring him off with a water pistol, stuck paper on the window, and put treacle on the window sill. The treacle seemed to have got rid of him, but he came back a few days ago! When I put treacle out again, he simply touched down in it, then threw himself against the window, leaving treacly claw prints all over it!! So I cleaned everything up (again) and turned my computer on to Google 'nuisance birds'. Freda mentioned that they had a problem in Chicago with hundreds of birds killing themselves by flying into the windows of a big building there, but the people put up big black plastic cut-outs of birds on the windows and it scared the real ones away.
Unfortunately for us, our particular window is not just plain glass. It has a film on the inside surface, which blocks out sunlight and helps to keep the room cool in summer. We can see out, but you can't see inside - it is like a mirror. So the birds really can see themselves quite clearly. We've had other birds come and talk to themselves - the Lorikeets and galahs are unbelievably narcissistic, smooching up to their reflections and making little soft squeaks! But this Noisy Miner is something else. Google had thousands of references to the problem, and I wrote down some of the solutions people had come up with.
In the last four days I have done this:
Put a $5 rubber snake on the window sill to scare the bird off. Didn't work. It just pecked the snake and pushed it away.
.JPG)
Scribbled over the glass with kids' glass crayons (cost $5). Didn't work. Too many gaps between the scribbles and as you can see, the reflections of the trees are still visible.
Put clingwrap all over the windows (as far up as I could reach with the help of a broom handle) and hung balloons over the windows. The next morning I came out to find most of the cling wrap on the ground - GEEEEEEZZ, what is this bird??? The balloons were still intact. He just dodged them to continue pecking the glass. I wound the window out as far as it would go, and waited for the bird to return. When it did, I poked my arm out of the window and sprayed it with the most toxic pressurepack spray I could find in the kitchen (would you believe, Scotchguard fabric protector?). Birds can fly faster than I can spray, so all that happened was a sticky mess on the window which I had a helluva job cleaning off.
I give up. Today, I cleaned everything off and resigned myself to cleaning bird dirt and blood from the windows every day until the wretched thing either knocks itself out, or finds somewhere else to roost. The most obvious solution would be to hang a screen of some kind - fabric, wire netting, whatever - over the windows, but as you can see in the photo below, it is practically impossible to do that. We can't put a ladder against the wall to get to the top of the window frame because of the steps. I thought of hanging something from the roof, but the edge of the roof comes over too far, and it would block the steps to the front door.
Unfortunately for us, our particular window is not just plain glass. It has a film on the inside surface, which blocks out sunlight and helps to keep the room cool in summer. We can see out, but you can't see inside - it is like a mirror. So the birds really can see themselves quite clearly. We've had other birds come and talk to themselves - the Lorikeets and galahs are unbelievably narcissistic, smooching up to their reflections and making little soft squeaks! But this Noisy Miner is something else. Google had thousands of references to the problem, and I wrote down some of the solutions people had come up with.
In the last four days I have done this:
Put a $5 rubber snake on the window sill to scare the bird off. Didn't work. It just pecked the snake and pushed it away.
.JPG)
Scribbled over the glass with kids' glass crayons (cost $5). Didn't work. Too many gaps between the scribbles and as you can see, the reflections of the trees are still visible.
Put clingwrap all over the windows (as far up as I could reach with the help of a broom handle) and hung balloons over the windows. The next morning I came out to find most of the cling wrap on the ground - GEEEEEEZZ, what is this bird??? The balloons were still intact. He just dodged them to continue pecking the glass. I wound the window out as far as it would go, and waited for the bird to return. When it did, I poked my arm out of the window and sprayed it with the most toxic pressurepack spray I could find in the kitchen (would you believe, Scotchguard fabric protector?). Birds can fly faster than I can spray, so all that happened was a sticky mess on the window which I had a helluva job cleaning off.
I give up. Today, I cleaned everything off and resigned myself to cleaning bird dirt and blood from the windows every day until the wretched thing either knocks itself out, or finds somewhere else to roost. The most obvious solution would be to hang a screen of some kind - fabric, wire netting, whatever - over the windows, but as you can see in the photo below, it is practically impossible to do that. We can't put a ladder against the wall to get to the top of the window frame because of the steps. I thought of hanging something from the roof, but the edge of the roof comes over too far, and it would block the steps to the front door.
posted by Gina E. | 8:27 pm
1 Comments:
You stole my heart with "greedy little pigs"...
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