My trials with the robin who keeps attacking his reflection on my patio doors continues. To summarize, about 3 weeks ago or so, a robin who claims my yard as his territory, saw his reflection and attacked my windows, thinking he was defending against an interloper.
I did some research online to find out what was going on because I had no idea what this bird was doing. I’ve been in my house 5 years, and while it happened last year, after one incident that bird stopped. This year’s robin is apparently not as smart as last year’s. He doesn’t give up and won’t stop.
Online sources said if you can keep the bird away for a few days, he’ll get busy with other stuff and forget the supposed territory invasion.
This sounded good. My drapes have a white backing and when they’re closed, he doesn’t see his reflection. After four days, I reopened my drapes–and he was back. :-/ I tried again. He just wouldn’t stay away.
My mom has a reflective owl and I put it out on a shepherd’s hook on my deck. This attracted attention from other, smarter birds like a blue jay and a crow. They both cruised by to check it out. 
It seemed to work with idiot robin, too. At least I had no strikes, but it stormed overnight and it blew away. I found it, but haven’t put it back up because it’s been so windy and next time I might lose it for good. My mom wouldn’t like that.
And the robin started attacking the window again.
Another suggestion I read online said that hawk decals will deter the strikes. At this point, it was worth a shot, so I spent $15 for the decal, put it up, and opened my drapes.
No strikes that evening. I began to feel cautiously optimistic.
The next morning, as I was putting my shoes on to go to work, I heard the bird attack the window again. He will not give up. He will not smarten up and realize it’s his own reflection. Really, does this idiot robin attack his reflection when he sees it in a puddle? It’s not as if the concept should be foreign to him.
The hawk decal might not have stopped the attacks, but it did do one thing–it changed the robin’s strategy. Instead of striking the glass repeatedly, he now attacks twice (looking like a total spaz while he does it) and then takes off. Then I’ll have some peace before he comes back to do another two strikes.
For weeks I’ve been worrying about this robin hurting itself, but I’m done with that. Not to sound heartless, but I’ve done everything suggested by the experts short of taping cardboard over my window to discourage him. If he kills himself hitting the window, well, survival of the fittest. This way we get some stupid out of the robin gene pool.
Territorial or not, you’d think that after thunking against glass about fifty times, the birdbrained robin would think, “dude, reflection.” Nope. Not that bright no matter what the website said.
