For the birds

At last - my lifelong strategy of stockpiling everything that could conceivably be useful later is finally paying off!  All those unfortunate people now stuck at home, in need of a screw or a bit of wood or something to complete some long-postponed project must be fairly gnashing their teeth at the fact that Screwfix is still open, but the government says you're not allowed to get in the car and go there.

I, on the other hand, have a garage full of screws and bits of wood and - things.  So, if you need anything, and you are within one official governmentally-approved exercise outing of Exminster, let me know.  I can always leave some things out on the pavement for you.

Meanwhile, it's the nesting season for starlings.  We know this because at least some of them are, rather surprisingly, undeterred by the big flap covering the end of our various wall-mounted vent terminations, and have been having a go at setting up shop inside.

To be honest, I wouldn't really mind housing a few starlings if they weren't so jolly noisy.  It's not their fault, but the vent pipes are made of a kind of stiffened corrugated paper with a foil lining, and when the starlings move about inside it sounds like an infestation of rats scurrying about under the floorboards.  Unsurprisingly, the lovely Jackie finds this an unwelcome addition to the dawn chorus, and so the poor blighters have to be evicted.

First up was the kitchen cooker vent, which started making a loud bashing noise when the fan was turned on.  I took it apart (from inside the house) and found a single bit of stick about eight inches long had fallen into the fan.  However, turning the fan on flat out for a while seemed to deter the little chappies because we haven't heard any more noises from there.  Or it might have been the curry.

Next was the scullery vent fan, which doesn't get used often because the scullery has a perfectly good window for ventilation.  This one is more or less underneath the bedroom, and thus was the main cause of wifely distress.  Several mornings of blatant scrabblings had led me to believe that they'd got a pretty advanced building project going on in there before I finally got around to having a look.

I spend a couple of hours looking for (and eventually finding) the special Devon neighbours' slopey drive ladder leg adjuster (see something-old-something-new.html) and then realised that I could reach the vent using just a stepladder, at least enough to poke a phone in, take a picture and have a look. Here's what I found:

Not exactly the Taj Mahal, is it?  So I took the cowl off the front and went off to find something to put across the front of it.  As luck would have it, I found a length of plastic stuff full of holes, designed to fit under your eaves and keep vermin out.  Ideal!  Well, nearly.  I tried plastic welding it with a soldering iron (following great success with the technique repairing the K75 pannier that got smashed when Dales misjudged a gap), but it didn't melt properly, so I had to use the hot glue gun instead.  Then the flap fouled on it, so I had to file bits off to make it work again.  Got there in the end though.  Of course, filling up most of the hole also necessitated the making of a new, thinner special tool to reinstall the cover on the housing, but I found a piece of aluminium which didn't even need cutting to make a new one.  Hah!

plastic stuff full of holes

Finally, the downstairs loo - this morning I heard the pesky passerines in that vent, too.  When I returned fire with a bash on the ceiling, a little chappy flew out and perched on the neighbours' garage roof nearby, looking very Sturnus and not a little Vulgaris.  So I just put a big spring clamp on the vent to keep the flap shut for now, and save any misunderstandings about the denial of planning permission.

Sadly, I think the starlings all hate me now.  Even though I went to the trouble of finding a big piece of drain pipe (previously seen in shelling.html) and fashioning it into a desirable bird house, with elegant slash-cut overhanging porch and real wood rear wall, all mounted away from the house on the garage with an oh-so-subtle downward slope for drainage, so far no starling has taken the bait.  I fear it may be too low for a sense of starling safety, and I'll have to relocate it up near the roof somewhere. Or maybe they are just snobbish about new-builds.  It's hard to tell.

The real wood rear wall didn't need any cutting either - it came from a now redundant CD rack - and neither did the bracket, which is an offcut from some galvanised perforated strip I used to make a magnetic mount for a poster.  All in all, a project that almost did itself.  And I have all the parts to make another, if we do get an uptick in demand, as they say in marketing. This classic, one of a kind, innovative technology can leverage world leading best practices to empower multiple stakeholders in a bleeding-edge, below-the-cloud synergy of green hogwash and feature-rich, space-age, client-centric environmental design patterns, disrupting the global homespace environment and providing a magical mindset and a solution-driven ecosystem filled with best of breed low-hanging fruit, so that your chicks can - er - hit the ground running.  As they say in marketing.

too low for starling safety?

As you can tell, the lockdown hasn't really had a very profound effect of my lifestyle yet.  True, we don't get visits from Layla any more, and we have to disinfect everything that comes into the house,  and my hands have never been so frequently washed, but many things go on pretty much as normal.  I hope your life is as undisturbed as mine, dear reader.  If not - I suppose it's yet another reason to retire as soon as possible.