ELEANOR PATRICK is surprised to find her windows coming under aerial attack.
I AM roused from sleep one morning by the sound of banging on my windows. Not totally alert, I flick through the major possibilities: plumber, postman, an idle stone or two from passing vandals, a tree branch lashing at the house - or maybe I've locked my husband out and he's trying to attract my attention. Pulling my dressing gown on to ward off the early chill, I stagger out of the bedroom.
Silence. Not even a flea targeting his breakfast. The morning sun peeps sheepishly round the end of the garage. I return to bed. When the banging resumes, I am awake enough to know that the plumber is booked for teatime, and the postman long since gone; vandals don't pass through the sticks; neither is there a gale or a stiff breeze. And my husband is safe on the high seas.
Thwang. Time for sleuthing in a deerstalker rather than tiptoeing in a nightie.
The culprit is a small pied wagtail. Female, judging by her slate-grey back. She lands with her familiar wobble on the lilac directly outside the kitchen window, pauses for breath and renews the attack with gusto. Fascinated, I watch for several minutes. She hits the window front-on, with white under-belly and beak, and remains suspended by nothing more than the force of contact for two seconds before darting back to the branch. A small victory over gravity.
I realise I have stumbled on a photo shoot. But even as I dash for my camera I frighten her away. Nevertheless, quarter of an hour later the window-bashing resumes, this time from the bedroom. Moving as warily as a mouse in an owl sanctuary, I peep round the doorway. There is no tree to jump from. She starts her fly-in from the lawn (a moss-covered expanse of low-quality grass borrowed from the scrubland outside) like a ground-toair missile. Later, I find her clinging to the fascia board outside the study, dive-bombing downwards. Still later, perched on the conservatory window ledge and jumping upwards like a pneumatic drill. Always the same flattened thwang; always the same messy marks left behind. The windows are indeed beginning to look vandalised.
Not being able to work against the din, I suddenly realise she may be trying to attract my attention. I check the seed container: empty. “Clever old thing,” I murmur - then instantly remember that pied wagtails don't bother with seed. At least, not round here where there are so many insects for both hors d'oeuvres and main course.
By lunchtime the attack has returned to the kitchen, where I now have my 200mm lens trained somewhat amateurishly through the double glazing. I shoot her 12 times in all, having chosen to focus on the branch where she seems mostly to land. Anticipating when to release the shutter is a bit hit-and-miss, and shooting through grubby glass does nothing for the image quality. In any case, her persistence outweighs mine - the bombardment lasts three weeks in all, punctuated by cries of shisic, shisic from her perch on the wall, as if ticking me off for being so thick.
My only neighbour jokingly suggests shooting it. The mess on the windows is totally out of order, he says. Well, quite apart from the fact that instinctive behaviour, albeit undesirable, warrants sympathy not capital punishment, there is the small point that the wagtail is joined quite soon by a blue tit and, later still, by another finch. Am I to shoot the whole bird population of mid- Northumberland?
But my own wagtail eventually desists and her fan club loses interest. Though she no longer attacks the house, her wooing of me has captured my heart and I keep track of her with interest. I sit up, instantly concerned, whenever she skitters to a halt on the stone wall outside my study, trembling as if in great fright.
Of course, it's pretence. She's fearless, as are her friends and family who obstinately strut until the very last moment on the drive in front of my approaching car, only zooming off in the last millisecond across the paddock in their distinctive scalloped flight path.
She shows total disinterest in both me and the house now. It's as if I don't exist. I've provided her (inadvertently, I admit, being relatively new up here) with all mod cons: an acre of uncultivated meadow surrounded by farmland; old buildings and drystone walls to inhabit; and grass, moss and roots to line her nest. I expect at least a passing nod - some acknowledgement of debt for the window-cleaning bill. But it seems I've been jilted. •
* IAN KERR, The Northumbrian's resident bird expert, writes: Pied wagtails are well known for vigorously defending both nesting sites and favoured feeding areas. There are many recorded instances of them attacking their own reflections in windows and other reflective surfaces. This bird seems to have taken an unusually long time to discover its mistake! Other birds were probably attracted to the spot by its alarm calls - perhaps a real case of them all being 'bird-brained'.