bird in the house!

this happens now and then in london in the warm months, because i live high up and have the windows open a lot -- this time i cannot see how or when it got in, the relevant windows can't be opened, and the outside door hasn't been opened since yesterday, but i've been through the (small) room several times without going outside. Birds are noisy when they fly inside! How did I not hear or see it before?

I am not entirely sure it flew out either -- it may have gone deeper into the house :(

Best way to catch them is to drop a tea towel or something on top of them when they're stationary.

yes i know -- it was a robin and boy was it not stationary, it had flown right into the house, luckily not going up the stairwell which is roomy with potentially misleading skylights

i've manouevred back into the room it was first in, using the alien3 shut-the-door-behind-you method

when i realised it had got through to the sitting room and was fluttering against the window trying to bash its way through, i was momentarily baffled to see another bird on the other side of the glass, also flutting -- actually its mate i think! chittering the alarm (against me) and giving its spouse (possibly bad) advice

at one point it perched on some high object, a defunct fusebox or similar, and when it flew off -- a single low extended sweep down a corridor -- it was trailing a long silky thread of old cobweb

haha THE COUNTRY it is full of mental peril for all

it wasn't actually out when i closed the inner door, but i'm hoping it is close enough to the open outer door that if i leave it, it will get away

Robins are hugely competitive and pretty violent too and the other bird was probably a rival threatening to peck his brains out if he came outside. In fact I reckon he could well have flown inside in a panic if he was being chased by another bird.

Maybe you should arrange some sort of disguise for the poor fellow before you evict him from your lodgings, guy could be facing his feathery doom going out there.

oh noes! i thought it was a lover's reunion :(:(:(:(:(

the other one was a female i'm pretty sure

she may still have been threatening to peck his brains out! #hackneyrudegyalrobins

i've manouevred back into the room it was first in, using the alien3 shut-the-door-behind-you method

<3

(friend of mine that this happened to said the most galling thing was finding his cat COMPLETELY IGNORING the bird instead of HELPING to remove it as cats should do)

i'm in shropshire lex! but yes, maybe she's carrying a to-scale rolling pin

Not sure about sexing robins tbh. Tried to google it and the only sensible advice out there seemed to be "you can't sex them (unless you see which one is on top!)".

That advice was from Mike in the Shetlands btw. It's pretty lonely up there apparently.

oh i thought that lady robins were all brown! the one i saw was (maybe it wasn't, it was just for a second)

haha country born and bred me, I AM SO OUT OF WATER

The brown ones are juveniles. He was being threatened by FERAL YOUTH.

or maybe it was his underage boyfriend worried out of his mind, DID YOU EVER THINK OF THAT?

am off to check if he's actually gone outdoors as i have to go shopping now and should probably shut the back door while i'm out

That advice was from Mike in the Shetlands btw. It's pretty lonely up there apparently.

Do they even have robins up there?

Wiki suggest not:

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/39/Erithacus_rubecula_distribution.png

why are they so phobic of portugal?

Maybe Mike's just met a few through the internet? xp

Portugal = any bird that fits in a cooking pot isn't really resident there for very long

That's the Euro debt crisis for you

robin the poor to seed the er er

he has gone and i am off to the mega-sainbury's near where genesis p. orridge's mum and dad used to live

bird in my plymouth kitchen!

woke up 6ish and went to hunt for my inhaler (it’s usually by my bed but i was travelling yesterday so it was in the kitchen). THERE IT* WAS 🐧 BASHING ITSELF AGAINST THE WINDOWS IN FRIGHT AND FRUSTRATION

*not the inhaler, focus please

anyway it was 6ish and i wasnt going to faff around trying to get it out until id had as bit more sleep. from experience i know how hard it would be to coax them out, they panic and fly high — and my rooms are all v high, unfortunately all my windows only open at the bottom. i had a pigeon once in my hackney flat which ended up trying to hide in the bath (i threw a towell over it and set it free by flapping the twoel out of the window) , plus the robin at mum and dad's house (see above)

i didnt really get much sleep, i was too busy thinking which doors shd i close, which windows open?

anyway when i eventually went back into the kitchen after an hour's fitful dozing it had found its own way out -- i think it was a goldfinch but i saw it against the light and i was sleepy

why does this happen to me so much = i have my windows open all the time btw

in passing upthread a lightning review of why alien3 is the best alien film

#ffs its still [rorschach voice] trapped in here with me, also it's a blue tit not a finch, in conclusion tits are as dumb as pigeons even in plymouth

Wrap a towel around it?

towel is easier tbh with a pigeon that lands in the bath than a tiny bird perching among glassware on a shelf i can only reach with a stepladder

anyway i opened the lower bit of all my windows really wide and eventually it found its own way out

the cause of, and solution to, all of life's problems: never close any of yr windows

windows open all the time? no screens? but bugs tho???! and bats even!!! what if your home is invaded by parliaments of cute owls and it costs too much to mail them to me

It's Plymouth, the bugs are pretty harmless. Apart from the wasps of course.

I was on vacation in northern France a couple of weeks ago and we rented a house in the country for a couple of days and the one thing I couldn't understand is why there are no screens, bugs (and also birds and I guess almost any animal) could just come in whenever they wanted to if you had the windows opened (which I did, because there was also no air conditioning). I get that the bugs are mostly harmless but they are still pretty annoying.

my screens are installed by spiders: thus are the bugs rendered harmless (eaten)

Do you people not have mosquitoes?!??? I always wonder that. I've never lived anywhere without an absolute PLAGUE of mosquitoes.

the basic answer is no not really, or only very occasionally, unless you live right next to rural standing water

British people don’t experience mosquitoes at quite the same level as people from eg. the US Midwest.

There are midges in parts of Scotland which will bite you to death (not literally) but only outdoors, they don't venture indoors. Though, to be fair, there aren't exactly many houses about in the Highlands.