More Backyard Birds
Tuesday, 11 November 2014There’s always lots of bird activity around my place in Australia, this time of year I can watch my courtyard blackbird and my computer screen at the same time. Last year I noted the first blackbird chicks had hatched out and were contemplating departure at the end of October. It’s nearly two weeks later this year although this year’s baby is much more active, it hasn’t spent days scuttling around at ground level before it took flight.
▲ This year’s baby blackbird perched on the windowsill yesterday.
▲ I’ve got another bird at my window which I’m not so happy about. No, not this one, this is a plastic hawk designed to scare my unwanted visitor away
The unwanted visitor is a raven – or perhaps a crow. There are six Corvidae in Australia, three of them crows, three of them ravens. My raven or crow hammers noisily at my bedroom window. Sometimes soon after dawn, sometimes later in the day. Sometimes not at all for a whole day, sometimes several times through the day. Birds usually peck at a window because they see their reflection or because they don’t see the window at all and simply want to get through. Neither applies to this unwelcome feathered friend, I’ve got no idea why it’s making a nuisance of itself. Google ’crows’ and ‘windows’ and you’ll find I’m not alone with unwanted crow visitors.
The plastic hawk would scare the crow (or raven) away I was assured. I climbed on the roof and hung it from our TV aerial close to the bedroom window. Did it work? No idea, it quickly fell off when the hanging wire it came with broke. I climbed back on the roof and wired it up more solidly, but a day later it was down again, or half of it, the wings had detached from the body. It is not well made and anyway it didn’t seem to bother my feathered visitor at all.
I’ve managed to deter it by draping netting across the window, but that’s just moved it on to another bedroom window although with less enthusiasm than it had for its favourite aperture.
