For months I have wanted bird feeders. Specifically I wanted suction cup bird feeders so we could put them right on the window and get a good view of the birds while we sat at the table. We spend a lot of time there! It took me awhile to finally find the right ones (Amazon, of course!) and we were all so excited to put them up and see the first birds start to find them.
Now, about a month later, I think we are being harassed by a crazy bird! It was cute, then it was funny, now it’s just down right weird! I think it is a finch, but we debate about whether it is male or female. I’ve taken more pictures of this bird this week then of both kids combined! Ha!
There are several of these birds around (finches, we think, but please correct me if you know otherwise) and they liked the bird feeder on the dining room window. We tried to move slowly by the window so as not to scare them away. One day we noticed one particular bird sitting in the feeder. Just sitting there. Eating sometimes, but mostly just sitting there. Turns out it was hording the food and preventing other birds from getting any! I let Eve scare it away after that :) But of course it came right back.
These two pretty birds snuck in a quick bite while the other finch was away.
Then we started noticing quirky behavior. The bird seemed very interested in the window and it started tapping on the window, all the while making quick flappy motions with it’s wings. Then it started sitting on top of the bird feeder! (I guess I don’t have any pictures of that) We laughed because it would slide off sometimes and desperately flap it’s way back to the top again. Then it started pecking at the living room window with a bird feeder. Sometimes eating, but mostly pecking and bonking into the window.
Yesterday morning I saw this…
Terrifying!!!
That is the window WITHOUT the bird feeder! It has no business even being near that window! Today we listened to the silly bird peck at and smack itself against that window for awhile before I started getting creeped out. Eve and I though maybe it wanted to come in and I had to explain to her, many times, why we could not let it in. It also seemed to prefer the window nearest where we were. I thought perhaps it could hear/feel our voices or something. Freaky! This afternoon we lined the interior window ledge with books. That mostly helped but the smallest book was black and the bird ended up confining itself to that small portion of the window and continued to flap against it.
Perched on the AC supports. Maybe we need to put in the AC. That would scare the bird away in a hurry!
It's hard to see in the photo, but here is the bird flapping back and forth on the ledge, banging into the window. This is before we put up the books.
I swapped out the black book with a brightly colored one and went upstairs to put the kids to bed. It’s dark now and all is quiet.
I wanted to leave this post weird and creepy, but while trying to find photos of finches online to see if that is indeed what kind of bird is wigging out at my window, I came across several postings of people talking about yellow finches seeing their reflections in windows and trying to fight the “other bird.” I suspect that’s our problem here. It’s definitely not a yellow finch, but it makes sense that other birds may exhibit the same behaviors. Tomorrow I will take some of their advice and see if we can get rid of this crazy creature… though it may also mean getting rid of the bird feeders, which makes me sad. I’ll have to think on that one for a bit.
