Deck'em Or Decorum

[waitingman]

The Issue: Our neighbour over the back fence has complained to my sister about our feeding the local magpies, because they "do their business" on his tiled back 'garden'. He has said he will bring up the 'issue' with me, next time he sees me

Background: Where I live ~ two hundred metres from natural bushland ~ has always been well-populated by native birds & animals... magpies, kookaburras, ravens, noisy miners, possums & blue-tongued lizards. And over the forty years I've lived here (On & off), we have always thrown stale bread to whatever birds happen to be there & not minded the possums raiding the compost bin. So do other people in the immediate vicinity. The complainant moved in a few years ago & quickly established an antagonistic rapport both with his neighbours & with Nature in general ~ erecting a two-storey McMansion, cutting down long-established trees, tiling & paving over the grass & installing a swimming pool without consultation. If possums are around, he hoses them. As his ill-disciplined children have grown up, they have become noisy & unruly (my sister has baby-sat & nannied for him occasionally), but we've never complained. Lately, we've had a young brood of magpies in the area... probably about a dozen in all. Because we've never cut down our trees, they sit in them. Because trees don't recognise fences, occasionally the magpies perch on the outer branches & do what they do

It's likely the magpies will move on... as have the kookaburra families, the recent ravens & the other birds over the years. That's what wild animals just do... My issue is mainly with the peremptory nature of this guy's complaint & his attempt at domineering bluster (my sister is a quiet, gentle woman & relatively small). He has claimed that other neighbours feel the same as him. Well, I speak to both my left & right-side neighbours fairly often (they're friendly) & they've never said a word about it to me. I will be checking this again with them before I 'discuss' this 'issue' with my 'neighbour'

My most-pressing problem will be holding my temper in check... It's been a relatively stressful couple of weeks since our return from overseas &, knowing me, this guy runs the risk of bearing the brunt of myriad frustrations piggy-backing themselves on my irritation. In other words, I'm likely to bring an M1 A2 Tank to a knife fight

What would you do?

Comments

[freyaw.livejournal.com]

I say this as someone with peewee leavings down both sides of both cars where he sits on the side mirrors before attacking his reflection in the windows... Breeding season, male peewee, we named him Oliver; he's been visiting for several years now. He also attacks his reflection in all the windows around our house and our neighbours houses and eats bugs (he follows me around the backyard when I'm digging) and assists in driving off the parrots who munch on my fruit (in the right season; he doesn't help with the stonefruit).

If your neighbour doesn't want birds perching over his yard, he has the option of cutting back the vegetation to the fenceline (but not over it). Doing so will probably fix his issue without affecting the behaviour or environs of anyone but him. (Suggest you go take photos of the fenceline as evidence in case the person in question is a real fuckwit. Documentation never hurts.)

Magpies also eat bugs and garden pests. You feed them your snails and lawnbugs, right?

[waitingman.livejournal.com]

I don't have to feed them those... they find them quite efficiently on their own...

It's not a fenceline problem ~ it's more that this is a guy who moved into a bushland area & doesn't like bushland animals, so wants them gone

He's the same as people who move near an established pub, then complain about noise... or the residents of new apartments above Luna Park (est. 1935) who complain about the roller coaster & crowd noises

With all of them, including my neighbour, you just want to shake them & shout... "Well, what the hell did you expect??!!"

There are plenty of nice high-rise apartments in the city... or plenty of new suburbs with all the trees removed in the north-west of town. Move there... preferably soon

[freyaw.livejournal.com]

We also live near a main road - people who complain about the peak hour traffic in the area get short shrift :P

Your neighbour has no right to control anything that happens outside his property. If damage is being caused to people, animals, or to public property, he has the right to report that to the correct authorities, who can then decide whether or not to do something about it, but you have complete control over what happens on your property (because it's not damaging anyone). Keep that thought in mind when talking to this idiot.

It's not a fenceline issue, but it is, because if he weren't attempting to control people and circumstances he has no right to control, and if he had some idea of how birds work from having observed them, he would have cut off the branches the birds perch on which impinge on his property. Removing those branches where they hang over his property would have been the neighbourly way of resolving the 'issue'.

You're right, the birds won't remove themselves from the area primarily as a consequence of you stopping feeding them. Oliver the peewee will stay here for as long as he's alive; fortunately my neighbours also like him, even though his attacking of windows in season is moderately noisy, annoyingly persistent, and quite distracting. The only ways to remove the birds before they're ready would involve illegal (and immoral) things such as killing them.