The return of the window eating birds

Of late my early morning alarm call has kindly been provided by the builders, who are adding an extra floor to a house two streets away, chucking debris down a long plastic chute; it looks like a series of bottomless buckets chained together. The chute has been cleverly designed to maximise amplification of the noise. As such it reminds me of the Japanese principle of suikinkututsu whereby water trickles through stones into a buried ceramic chamber, which makes the noise more expansive. The builders are, again in the Japanese spirit, very considerate, and only operate the chute for an hour or so each day, usually from about 7am.

This morning however I had a new delicious aural treat to bring me round. The return of the window eating birds.

Rather than the warming sound of debris tumbling down a 5 mile long chute, I am woken up by what sounds like a pneumatic drill very close to my head. It seems that the window itself is amplifying the noise of the beast pecking at the window frame.

Last year the culprit seemed to be a little yellow fluffy thing – as a poet I ought to know the name of birds, but I don’t. This year the rascal was kind of grey with a reddish breast. Whether one has grown into the other is not a point that I am able to advise on.

I am sure that one of them must be a finch, which is of course the patron saint bird of Finchley and gives rise to the town’s name. It is said that if the finches that reside in the famous Bothy ever leave, then the ground will open up and the whole of Finchley will be swallowed up in apocalyptic earthquake. Those living across the great divide (also known as the Eruv) that is the North Circular Road, ie Hampstead Garden Suburbs, will be safe, as technically that is not Finchley.

I see from my records that I contacted the RSPB about my bird problem in the first week of September 2005, so the window eating birds are late this year. The RSPB recommended that I treat the area with aluminium ammonium sulphate, saying that I could get this from the chemist. However all the chemists I spoke to told me that this would have to be specially ordered, and could only be obtained in industrial sized quantities. I was a little reluctant to do this in case I was mistaken for a terrorist building a home made bomb which I would then place by the Naked Lady, thus ripping apart the Finchley - Hampstead fault line, which diverts at this point from the North Circular to run directly between the Naked Lady’s legs, and then back up that funny slip road.

So, on a neighbour’s advice, I tied pieces of tinfoil to strings which are dangled out of the window.

This seems to work, only as the tinfoil catches the wind, it taps very gently on the window – ratatat-tat paterpatpat.

This gentle drumming is in its own way as annoying as the chute and the pneumatic drill.