Crazy Obsessive Robin

Since just about birth, Goose has had issues sleeping at night.  As in, she believes that night time is play time, and day time is for sleeping.  I've tried just about everything I am comfortable with trying (I do not believe in cry it out).  So, I've learned that if I want any sleep, I sleep when she does, and I stay up all night with her.

A few days ago, we were awaken by a very strange tapping sound on our bedroom window.  It really scared me since our window is ground level.   We cautiously investigate, and find out that there is a robin bird pecking obsessively at the window!

Michael and I would go outside and make load noises to get the bird to go away, but he just kept coming back!  Finally, I didn't know what else to do, so I let my dogs spend the day out in the yard and throughly covered the area with treats so the dogs were near that area.

That was all fine and dandy until today.  The bird started at 7am.  I had just got to go to bed, and he starts. Peck peck peck flapp flapp flapp peck over and over and over.   The bird didn't care if the dogs were out or in. Nothing.  Michael even pegged him "gently" (please don't throw stones at me for this, we were very sleep deprived at the time) with a bb.  The darn bird still came back.  I was thinking "I am about to murder me a bird".

So in my sleep deprived stupor, I thought, "Well, birds are afraid of owls.  What if I print a picture of an owl off and tape it to the window." So, I found a picture, and printed it off. Here is the photo:

I think Mr. Robin must have been laughing at me the whole time.  Because as soon as I went inside, peck peck peck flapp flapp flapp peck.  

That is when I decided to do a little more research, and I found a blog called HinesSight.  He wrote a post, "How We Stopped a Robin's Pecking At Our Window Glass" about a bird doing the exact same thing at his home in OR.   He described, that through his research he found out that robins (male and female) are very territorial, and they think they are eliminating the competition by attacking the glass. So I guess this stupid robin saw his own reflection in our window and we NUTS trying to kill the "other" bird.  

The author of HinesSight tired several different approaches. The owl, a scare crow, metallic ribbons, and netting. He found that the netting was the only thing that worked, and it worked by keeping the robins from getting to the window.  

So this morning, I was too tried to drive to buy netting, so I tried to com up with my own solution.  I too a HUGE pice of aluminum foil and made it into a ball.  Then I tied some ribbon around it to make what I thought looked like a tether ball.  The next step took some ingenuity and determination.  I put painters tape on the ribbon (opposite the ball), used two long sticks, and tapped it to the gutter.  So it was like a swinging ball hanging in front of the window. 

If this doesn't work, tomorrow I will be putting netting up.