Psycho

If there were a darwin award for birds this wren would get it. More time has been spent attacking itself in windows or car mirrors than ever could be directed into reproducing his kind.

This has been going on for months: the sound at dawn of a bird flying at my window then pausing on the flyscreen, then battering its beak at the glass again and again. Over and over at intervals throughout the day.

I thought its reflection in a cabinet mirror was the initial cause so I covered that, but the bird proceeded to bombard every window, finding glass as effective as mirror. When it discovered the car mirrors it was ecstatic.

At first I presumed it was one of the countless birds that have strayed into our house (and caused endless trouble to remove) wanting to get back in for some neurotic reason.

Nearly every species of small bird has made it into our farmhouse at some time: blue wrens, honeyeaters, yellow robins, fantail flycatchers, warblers, silvereyes, redback wrens, redbrow finches, swallows, even quail scooting around the floor suddenly unable to recognise a doorway. Only the other day a pair of willie wagtails were in the barn, and it took some time to convince them to find the cavernous opening of the rolladoor. By the time I had walked back to the house to judiciously shut the doors, sure enough one was inside fluttering frantically against the windows. I caught it with a small green aquarium net (that dates back to when my children were small and fond of fishing odd waterbugs out of the river). Most efforts to remove curious intruders have not been so simple. Some birds that favour flying from rafter to rafter rather than coming low enough to see doors wide open and windows with flyscreen removed, have had to be chased back and forth until everyone including the bird is exhausted.

It is because the house is one huge room -- all steel frames and high roof -- without ceilings and internal walls yet.
We have learned to keep the doors shut, but one hot day when we came in for lunch, in the few minutes that we flopped at the table for a drink a bird followed us then typically failed to find an exit. Another time when a pair of swallows and their fledgling came inside, no sooner would one adult fly out than it would swoop right back in again upon hearing the young bird's distress.

I wonder if Psycho ever came inside what I would do.
This wren seems incapable of learning the folly of its habit, yet has demonstrated a quick ability to learn. Wherever I park the car it has triumphantly found it.

Dare I admit that the day after the fire my heart sank at the all too familiar morning sound of bird battering against glass. Of all the birds to have perished in the bushfire, Psycho had not been one.