Last spring I had a lovely family of birds move into the exhaust pipe for the fan in my bathroom. No, they weren’t in my bathroom – the pipe opens to the outside of the house directly above my bathroom window. When my Aunt had the house re-stuccoed (my word, not Webster’s), the guys apparently removed the covering that had kept nature out of that pipe in previous years. Unfortunately when they finished their job, no one re-covered the pipe and the birds thought it was a magnificent place to nest. For about a week after that I would hear various fluttering and chirping whenever I was in my bathroom – they were happily dragging all sorts of sticks, grasses, and lint into their new little abode. This wasn’t too disruptive….until the family grew. Suddenly I would hear several baby birds crying constantly to be fed. At first it was nice to have nature so close and it was very nice to hear the sounds of spring whenever I was in my bathroom. That lasted about two days for me…..then it was annoying. I suppose it would be like having a newborn in my apartment always crying for attention, except this was at least four or five newborns and they weren’t mine. So it was more like being in a grocery store and watching someone else’s kid throw a temper tantrum while the Mom is happily looking through the peaches and ignoring her child……you REALLY want the Mom to do SOMETHING to make the noise stop!
I am not mean enough to have gone in and swept the nest out of the pipe….I just waited until the baby birds were grown and the family vacated the premises. So a couple months later my Dad was nice enough to cover the pipe opening with some wire mesh and secured it nicely with a metal band. IT looked great to me…no more birds fluttering and chirping while I am trying to go about my business. So I thought everything was good…
Then I heard the fluttering start up again about a week ago. I figured there was no way the birds were back in the pipe….it’s covered now! I’d look at the opening periodically and the mesh was still in place, so I guess the birds just kept coming back to check out their old home….who knows. Last weekend I heard more of an intense fluttering and chirping going on by the pipe and went to have a closer look. The birds were pulling at the wire mesh to try to get back in! And they were actually making headway!
Apparently instinct is pretty damn strong and these birds wanted their old nesting area back. They had made a small hole in the mesh at this point, so I figured I had to do something to keep them out. I chose the man’s quick solution – I got out my enormous roll of duct tape that my Dad had bought me at Home Depot (seriously it’s about 100 feet of duct tape). I snipped off a couple pieces of that to cover the hole in the wire mesh and went on my way. I might as well have just hung a welcome sign out for the birds. I could have provided them with a whole ball of lint from the dryer! Alas, the duct tape did not work……here is the newly remodeled nesting area:
In this first picture you can see the pipe above my bathroom window...
In this second picture you have a wonderful close-up of the hole the birds made and the nest they have built.So much for the duct tape.....
Nature 1, duct tape 0
