Long-time readers will remember The Woodpecker Wars, wherein a woodpecker decided that my furnace vent was the most awesome tool in the world to hammer out a tune to attract a mate, and affected my sleeping patterns for quite some time.
Well, a pair of starlings is building a nest in my dryer vent. And since I don’t anticipate having anyone come out to put a cage over the vent before next week, and I am quite tired of being awakened at 5 in the freaking morning, I went out there myself, pulled out a bunch of the next, then covered the vent with a cut-up pair of nylons (Sarah’s suggestion–it lets air out and still keeps the birds from getting in).
Classy, I know. But so far, it’s working. There’s a pair of homeless starlings looking for a new place to live right now. Good riddance.
House Martins nested under the eaves of my old house above my bedroom window. Every May I looked out for them, relieved when they started patching up the old nests, that they had avoided the shotguns of the French and Italian sportsmen who enjoy killing little songbirds.
In this house I’ve had to hang bird feeders outside my window to enjoy some small songbird activity.
Starlings, which were so numerous only a few years ago, are now an endangered species in the UK, and it is a couple of years since I’ve seen one.
I miss the morning twittering above my head. I hope your pair find a new nest :)
They are welcome to a new nest, so long as it isn’t in one of my vents. I had a nest of sparrows outside my air conditioner in my bedroom window in an apartment in NJ. I prefer sleep,thank you. Effing things start up in o-dark-thirty in the morning.
o-dark-thirty in the morning., well that would be about 4 am here.
I call them the twitter brigade as they start their chorus from the surrounding trees.
Thank goodness we don’t have starlings because in another part of the world I lived in they always left pests to infest our homes and bite us.
The only crowd I don’t like are the pidgeons which make a terrible mess and disagreeable noise.
We have quite a variety of native species and some alien mynas and (w)ring necked parakeets that people let escape and which are now proving to be a menace especially to the smaller species visiting our gardens.
Ho hum, the bird world has its problem with “illegals” as well.
Remember that the nylons make a great lint trap. You will need to clean it out every so often as it will clog up.
I will, thanks. I’m probably going to replace it with a vent guard, but I need a larger one than I can find at Home Depot.