A persistent, noisy tapping on a window of my home woke me at daybreak.
“Tap, tap, tap”. I followed the sound as I searched the rooms of the house before finally coming to the window of my study overlooking the leafy back garden.
There I saw a male blackbird banging its beak against the window pain. As I approached it flew off, startled, but it was soon back. After I had retreated to the bedroom to go back to sleep he started up again.
He was at it all morning, all afternoon; then next morning again. It was driving me mad.
Birds attacking windows is a common problem, especially at this time of year. During late winter and spring my mail is full of stories of garden birds doing exactly the same thing .
The reason is simple – male birds declaring territories in spring, and sometimes out of the mating season, see their reflection in a widow and believe a “rival” is on their patch. This bird must be attacked and driven off, hence the strikes against the window pain.
Funding a solution can be difficult and often there are no easy fixes.
The problem goes hand in hand with another more serious issue – that of bird strikes involving both homes and high-rise apartment and office buildings, which yearly kill millions of birds across the world.
Birds, of course, cannot detect the hard surface of a window and many modern buildings have built-in measures to reduce the birdstrike toll like tinted panes and windows placed at an angle so they do not reflect the sky.
With domestic homes, it is especially important to ensure there is not a clear view across the house from one set of windows to another. In my home in Dynnyrne I always keep the curtains drawn on one side to ensure birds do not consider the woodland they can see through the windows on each side is linked by open space.
Another simple and effective deterrent to counter bird strikes is to hang shiny objects, like old CD discs, above the widows. The reflection and movement of the discs or any shiny object in the wind will scares off the birds. Another measure is to cover the windows, either inside or out, during spring. This, of course, also addresses the reflection issue but it is not always practical.
Birding organisations also advocate posting outlines of birds of prey on widows.
I soon found a solution to deter my nuisance bird. I had picked up a laminated picture of a masked owl in the Waterworks reserve which had been left behind by a natural history class. I was intending to place it in one of the BBQ huts used for such lessons. Instead, I placed it in my study’s widow. The aggressive blackbird had such a fright he never returned.