We appear to have a mental chaffinch in our garden.
I was making myself a cup of tea this morning, when there was a tapping on the window. I looked round, and found myself face-to-beak with a male chaffinch, who was staring menacingly at me through the glass. Weird, I thought, turning back to my teapot.
The chaffinch took great exception to being ignored in this way: he leapt up and started trying to break through the window. Five or six times, he flew up from the window sill and piled into the glass, pecking and clawing at it as he did so. This bird evidently had an attitude problem.
It took me a while to work out what was going on: he was fighting his own reflection, the stupid twat.
It must be getting near spring.
Hee hee. We used to have a peacock that would wander into the garden most days and peck on the french windows quite ferociously - never failing to wake us up at dawn.
Made a nice mess of some of the silver cars parked outside the pub nextdoor.
In the autumn, the birds in my garden binge on blackberries.....
Remember that song by Prince....?
Purple Rain!
When I read that you'd got a mental chaffinch it stopped me in my tracks as I sat and wondered whether a 'mental chaffinch' was something along the lines of a 'mental note'.
I think you're getting confused with a dotterel
Either the illustrator on the RSPB website is visually impaired or the dotterel pictured in the banner has been on a rack/extreme diet. The photographer on the chaffinch page obviously held his camera incorrectly (possibly back to front).
Mental Chaffinch.....Bird Brain! I get it!
Have a male chaffinch doing exactly the same at the moment, has been for hours. Cats are going wild. They will get it in the end if it doesn't learn some sense. It won't shoo away, just screeches at me. Have tried a little windmill and bits of foil on string, no effect, they just cramp its style a bit. There is a female with it but she has more sense. He has tried hovering like a humming bird and pecking like a woodpecker now
We had one tapping last year and ended up putting netting across all our front windows, he disappeared over the Winter but alas has returned! This year he is going all around the house- HELP - what can I do?
Wait until winter.
You could print out Richard's Sparrow-hawk photo and display it in the wnidow. That's make him a bit less keen forthe territory.