Mad-City Wedge

The bird is back, and now it has a little friend. To recap, there is a big fat robin that has been attacking my sliding doors in the back. And I mean attacking. Throwing itself into the window repeatedly for hours on end. I get tired watching it. Feel sorry for it to, because it isn’t going to win. It just means I need to go clean the windows again because I don’t like looking out windows covered in bird crap. And cleaning the windows actually contributes to the fact that it attacks it again the next day since it can now see it’s reflection again. I put some decals up on my sliding doors to “help” deter the birds from attacking it, but my sources say that the bird is still at it. Plus there are traces of it having been there. There’s crap on the window and crap on the deck furniture.

But now, the bird has a new partner in crime. There is small robin that is now attacking my roommate’s window in the front of the house in the morning. Today, she wasn’t too pissed off, she was already awake and getting ready for work when the attack began. But she typically works till 3am and sleeps in, so she may not be so forgiving in a couple days when the bird begins it attack at 6am and she’s only been sleeping a couple hours. The kicker was the bird was still throwing itself at window when I was leaving for work at 830.

I gotta give it to these birds, they are persistent. They see another bird and they attack it relentlessly. And now they have the house surrounded. One in the front, one in the back.

Now if anyone reading this has any ideas on how to keep these birds from crapping all over my windows and generally being annoying, please let me know. I’m open to suggestions.

Well, the bird was back this morning. It is a single robin that is the source of my frustrations now. Today, I awoke to the sound of a bird flying into a window, repeatedly, once again. Turning the lights on worked a little bit yesterday, but I don’t think it is the ultimate solution. It was still crapping all over my deck.

So today I went in to ask some of the local experts at a store that sells lots of stuff related to birds. The old guy I talked to pretty much suggested what I had read yesterday, and they had some falcon silhouette decals to put on my windows, so I purchased them and have placed them on the two sliding doors. I managed to hose off most of the bird crap, but there is still some more out there that I need to hose off tomorrow.

As I’ve looked out on the deck this evening, the robin is still there, but now it is sitting over in the corner of the deck and isn’t flying into the window. It seems to be looking at the decals. I have seen it fluttering a little bit in front of the window, but so far it hasn’t attacked it.

Hopefully these decals work.

So I’m home early enough that their is daylight again, and pretty much since I’ve been home, a bird has been flying into my window, almost looking like it is attacking another bird, except it’s my window. This has been going on for a solid hour now, and needless to say, it is has become annoying.

So I opened up google and typed in “birds flying into windows” and learned a wealth of information. Some of which I already knew. I knew they see reflections and either see a reflection of the sky and try to keep flying or see a reflection of another bird and try to attack it. What I didn’t know is that to help prevent this the sites listed a few different solutions. One, leave your windows dirty. This obviously isn’t working. I haven’t washed the windows in a long time. Two, hang stuff outside the window. Since this is a sliding door it wouldn’t be very practical. I’d like to be able to go in and out and not run into stuff. Three, turn on a light inside to make the inside brighter than the outside and help reduce the reflection. These is easy enough to do, and seems to be working because since I turned on the light, the bird hasn’t been attacking the window. I guess I’ll be leaving a light on for the next few weeks because the fourth thing I learned is this is most common only in the spring (which is now) and fall.

A couple days ago I noticed that it looked like birds had been flying into the doors based on the crap that’s on them.

So while I was cooking dinner tonight, I kept hearing a sound like something was running into the windows. So finally, I’m just kind of looking out onto my deck (there was still daylight out there, which is also a nice change), seeing that there is all kinds of bird crap that I’ll need to hose off this weekend (if I’m lucky, the rain will do that tonight), and then see a bird that just keeps flying into my sliding glass door.

It would just kind of hover in front of the window and then fly into it. Hover and then fly into it. It did this for about 10 minutes. The kicker is, it just wasn’t the one sliding door it kept flying into. I have two doors that go out onto my deck, one on one side of the room and one on another side, and it was flying into both of them. Between these repeated attempts at futility, I saw the bird sitting on the corner of the table on my deck, and now have a really good idea about why there is all kind of crap right there. This bird must have been doing this for a long time.