Turdus migratorius Grease On My Windows

That’s right, the crazy robin is back again this year! Two years ago I was awakened at sunrise by a series of loud taps on my bedroom window. I dismissed the noise at first and drifted off to sleep only to be awakened again by more loud taps on the glass. I discovered upon raising my shade that it was a robin who was valiantly fighting it’s reflection on my second story bedroom window. “Why couldn’t it have picked a down stairs window,” I wondered blearily. I opened the window and shooed it away, went back to bed and once again was awakened after I had gone to sleep. After a moment’s thought, I went into the next bedroom and retrieved my daughter’s large Raggedy Anne doll and placed it on the window sill so that it stared sightlessly out with it’s large eyes. I had no more problems with the robin.

That is I had no more problems with THAT window. The robin then proceeded over the next few weeks to attack every single window on the east side of the house. It didn’t merely give the windows a few dusultory pecks. No, it acted as if its territory (my front yard) had been invaded by an army of other robins, and it spent every waking moment fiercely attacking its reflection—over and over and over. At the end of this campaign, all my windows had been smeared almost completely with what I could only call…Robin grease.

The material on the windows appeared to be some type of oily substance which was very difficult to wash off. I assume it was the oil that the bird rubbed on its feathers which it got by rubbing it’s head on it’s pygidium, sometimes indelicately called the “Pope’s Nose,” which forms that little stub which most people call a tail.

Last year I only heard a few pecks from the robin. I assumed that the original robin had possibly moved on to that worm farm in the sky and breathed a sigh of relief. But now it’s back, back with a vengeance. At the moment it is only attacking the top three panes of my large front living room window…just those three. And sure enough, I see the tell-tale smears of robin grease. I watched it today as it sat in a bush outside the window. It would sit there impassively, staring with it’s crazed beady eyes at my window for a few moments, and then with no discernable change in it’s demeanor it would launch itself like a rocket at the window.

I’m taking no chances; I’m looking high and low for the Raggedy Anne Doll.