My Bird War

Al wrote a post on Bird Wars in which birds seem determined to wipe out mankind.

My Bird War is a bit different. My birds want to move in with me. I have sparrows living in the eaves on the side of my house. I have sparrows - (maybe starlings... I think they pushed the sparrows out) living in the eaves on the front of my house. I have starlings that want to live in my dryer vent. And I have starlings that want to nest in hallway to my back door.

The birds on the side of the house don't bother me. They aren't messy at all and I can watch them from my kitchen window and they are really cute. The ones at the front of the house have to go - their droppings are all over the place. Yuck. Once the weather is nicer and I can get up there they are going to be evicted. I think I solved the dryer vent problem with a bit of hardware cloth - I haven't seen evidence of any successful nesting in the past couple of weeks...

The starling trying to nest in my hallway was the biggest pain. It was very loud in the mornings and every time I walked out of the house, it would put up a big fuss. I thought that if I also put up a big fuss - yelling, banging, etc. - the bird would get the hint and leave, deciding that my hall would not be a good place to live. However, being the tenacious bird it was, it stayed.

Today I caught it. We went for a nice long drive to a big nature park and I released it. That's a picture above of the bugger before I let it go. I'm hoping that it will stay there, deciding that the great outdoors would be a much nicer place to raise a family. Or if it does fly back here, it will be so traumatized that it will stay away from my hallway.

Cross your fingers!