Affordable Bird-Housing
Lately, my mom has been having issues with a pair of small, black and white birds, which have been pecking into the wooden siding on their home — to build a nest, I assume. After doing some research, I have learned that these birds are known as Black-capped Chickadees and they were definitely pecking to create a nesting hole — which needs to be a specific size so that they can squeeze inside, but predators cannot. The pecking and the subsequent holes were upsetting my mom from both a property damage perspective — she will have to replace the siding now, and from a noise perspective — it was loud and disruptive inside the house while the birds were pecking.
To deter the birds from continuing this behaviour, my mom had my stepdad use some sealant to close off any of the existing holes that had already been started. However, the birds returned, and continued to peck in other locations on that same side of the house. In her frustration, my mom decided to throw some of our dog’s toys to hopefully scare off the chickadees from their construction project, but that didn’t help either since the birds would fly away briefly at the sight of the toys but return immediately after.
I suggested to my mom that instead of trying to deter the birds from pecking through various forms of intimidation, that the best possible option might be to acquire a birdhouse which could serve as their nesting place without the need for any more damage to her house, or to the birds themselves if they were to get hit by a well-aimed dog toy. Following my suggestion, my mom found a cheap, wooden birdhouse on Facebook from someone nearby, which we installed on the side of our garage, directly across from the patch of house which the birds were attempting to call home — and two weeks later this solution seems to have worked out perfectly. I have noticed two similar looking birds going in and out of the birdhouse, and the pecking seems to have ceased — for now, which I am assuming to be related phenomena.
This success then got me thinking about how our society approaches the issue of homelessness in a similar manner to the way my mom was originally treating her unwanted avian visitors. We don’t let them live on our properties, we evict them, we make it more difficult for them to sleep or remain anywhere for too long through anti-homeless architecture and urban planning measures. We use intimidation and brute force to relocate unhoused peoples away from places that we declare they don’t belong, but they are just as human as the rest of us — we are all members of the same society, they just can’t afford a steady place to live. Much like my mom and the woodpeckers, we all share the same space, and the right solution might be to just provide adequate, affordable housing so that everyone is guaranteed access to a safe space to exist. Housing is a basic human need, and we — our society, needs to do a better job of providing it to the people who need it most. Instead of wasting our money, time, and energy trying to remove the other group, or being, we could use those same resources to provide them a place to live and coexist in harmony with one another.
