For the last several days, a song sparrow has been pecking at a couple of windows on the back end of our house. While my wife has been bemusedly coping with most of the attacks, I finally got a photo of the offending fellow this morning.
If you look at the window in the photo above, you’ll see scratch marks aplenty.
This is the second window the bird has been attacking. His first target was a nearby window, over which we taped a large sheet of newsprint. I don’t think the bird has been back there.
This is isn’t our first encounter with ersatz bird attacks on reflective services. In previous Springs, I’ve watched a sparrow bash the side-view mirror of our Subaru. At our previous home, a robin persistently jabbed at one of our living room windows until I taped newspaper sheets over it.
There are various ways to keep birds, who see their reflection and apparently think they’re attacking a rival, from bashing one’s windows. We’d place some decals up if we had them. You can also hang streamers — anything to break the plane that the bird is misinterpreting.
We’ll probably put up another newsprint sheet in hopes of turning the bird away. But we have several windows that give us views into our yard, so this small human-bird skirmish could go on a while. 🦅
The Jersey Birder 
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