By Cara Sulieman
A MOTHER and son have had a shock after they found bandit blackbirds stealing the rubber from their windscreen wipers.
Christopher Dodds, 20, had parked his Vauxhall Corsa on the drive of their home in the Easter Drylaw area of the capital.
When his mum, Christine Dodds, 51, went to the kitchen window, she saw that the blackbirds were attacking his windscreen.
She said: “I looked out the window and saw a pair of blackbirds sitting on my son’s car pecking at the windscreen.
“Pecking away”
“I thought he’s maybe left some food inside the car and they’d tried to get in.
“They kept doing it, just sitting pecking away. I saw them about three or four times that day.
“When my son came down I told him and he went to have a look. That’s when we realised it wasn’t the window they were pecking, it was his windscreen wipers.”
And it’s not just Christopher who has been the victim of their enthusiastic pecking; Christine has also had her car attacked.
Plastic bags
Christine said: “The next time I saw them they were sitting on the front of my car. I ran out the house and chased them away.
“Now I have to wrap my wipers in plastic bags whenever I leave the car.
“They’re always here, they have a nest round the back of my house.”
But it’s not only the blackbirds stealing that has been unnerving Christine – she’s determined that they are watching her.
Look out
She said: “They were sitting on the front doorstep eating some leftover food when I came home one day.
“When they heard the car pull into the drive they turned round and looked and then ignored me and got on with what they were doing.
“It’s like one of them acts as look out whilst the other one does the pecking.”
Despite the Dodds having two of their cars attacked, Christine doesn’t think anyone else is facing the same problems.
Building a nest
She said: “I’ve seen the birds sitting on a few other cars, but only once or twice. They seem to have something against us.”
It’s thought that the pair are using the rubber to build their nest.
A spokesman for the RSPB said that this was the most likely reason for the bird’s odd behaviour.
He said: “Most garden birds will have been nest building in recent weeks so people might see them flying around with twigs, leaves and that sort of thing.
“But they can sometimes take a notion to use other materials and it sounds like that’s what has happened here.”
