So outside the kitchen at work, there’s a large bush in which lives a mockingbird. When the kitchen workers park their cars nearby, the bird spends hours pecking at the side mirrors. It will perch atop a mirror, then jump down to the door frame, peck the mirror, and then hop back up to perch on the mirror for another few seconds. Repeat. Repeat. Repeat until the kitchen workers go home.
So, what is the bird doing? The current guesses around the office are that it’s either trying to have sex with itself, or it’s trying to drive itself away from its territory. Not having an ornithologist handy, I turn to the Straight Dope.
Of course, all the while the bird is pecking mirrors, the bird is also pooping all over the car, and scratching any plastic parts (like the side mirror housings on newer cars) with its little claws. It has also been known to run across a sunroof, pecking away like mad at the glass, leaving blobs of birdcrap behind.
It’s been doing this for the past five months or so. Before then (and I mean for the previous couple of years), it (or other birds just like it) would occasionally spend some time (minutes, not hours) pecking at the tinted, mirror-like windows of the building itself. But not nearly with such intensity as this particular bird goes after these side mirrors.
Paper plates taped over the cars’ side mirrors prevented this behaviour, but was too much of a hassle. Clear plastic bags tied loosely around the mirrors didn’t stop the bird at all, but did save the mirrors themselves from poop. One woman had a big SUV with foldable side mirrors, but she told me that folding the mirrors in just made the mess worse, as they didn’t fold in enough to prevent the bird from getting between the mirror and the window, and the bird’s flapping wings in the narrow space spread its poop everywhere.
While we’ve gotten plenty of use out of the bird as a joke (that it exemplifies the term “bird brained” very well), the kitchen workers are damn tired of it. I’ve been thinking about getting a decently-sized hand mirror and hanging it from a branch in the bird’s bush, but am slightly concerned that the bird might exhaust itself given a mirror to peck at during all daylight hours, instead of just the two or three hours it does so now, while the kitchen workers are parked near its home.
Also, since the bird doesn’t always pick the car nearest to its bush, I think it probable that a mirror in the bush itself won’t actually stop the defiling of the vehicles.
Perhaps needless to say, the people around here are reluctant to harm the bird (although BB guns have been jokingly discussed). Any suggestions of how to reduce or prevent this behaviour (at least in relation to the cars, I couldn’t care less about the building) would be appreciated.