Red vs. Birds, Part Whatever

I'm only being semi-facetious with that title, because I've had quite a Spring dealing with birds. 

My involvement with birds is mostly two things: don't let them get into the house, and set out seeds for them in the birdfeeder. They don't bother me, and I don't bother them. However, each Spring there is an ongoing battle to keep the birds from building a nest in the porch.

It's the robins that are doing that. Always the robins. 

One year, the robins made a nest in the bush right next to where our cars are parked, and one of them would sit on the side mirror of one of the cars all day long, making noises at it's reflection, and crapping all over said side mirror. I had to hose off that side mirror every couple of days until the baby birds in the nest grew up and flew away. 

However, for the past several years, the robins have been trying to build a nest in our porch, which would prevent us from actually using said porch until they left. (They have a habit of dive bombing us if we come close to where their nest is.) To prevent this, I've turned on the overhead fan on the porch for several days to keep the birds from landing on the fan and trying to build a nest there. This also keeps the robins from building a test on the rafters next to the fan by blowing away the twigs and whatnot.*

This year the robins were unusually persistent, but they eventually failed to build a nest and moved on. I thought that my work was done and I could turn my attention to staining the deck boards I put down last year. The rain had been unusually persistent this Spring, so for much of the past Spring the weather had either been too wet or too cold to allow me to go out and stain the deck boards. Finally, however, the weather turned and I got four days of clear weather for the deck to dry out and I could make a go of staining it.

Then the robins decided to take their revenge by finding a nice perch on the deck and start crapping all over it. 

I was planning on using a deck cleaner/prep solution on the boards anyway, but the appearance of bird poop all over the deck was quite unwelcome. I spent the better part of a day scrubbing the thing down, clearing it out, and then the next day there was more poop to clean off.

After two days of this, I finally said "Fuck it," and decided to stain the deck after work.

Partway through the staining, I finally remembered
to take a photo.

Using a paint pad as opposed to a roller made for a lot less splatter and made the process go more quickly than it had in the past.

The view from the porch after it was completed.
Yes, the screen is ripped, but that's an artifact
of the original screen that enclosed the porch. That's
a story that I'll have to discuss in another post.

I know it's not perfect; I can see the overlapping coats of stain in plenty of spots, but the entire point of this was to protect the wood, not look perfect. I can go put another coat of stain on later, but the current problem is fixed.

Now, I have to work on the stairs, then address the railings. My budget might not permit either to be complete this year, because I had surprise car bills this Spring. I also decided to pass on finishing up my amateur radio license this year because buying ham radio equipment was out of the question too. Oh well, one thing at a time.

*It's not as if the robins don't have trees and bushes to build nests in nearby; there's a bunch of them around.