The Impala, Under Attack from a Crazy Robin

My husband and I own four cars between us, and we have a two-car garage. The quick math will confirm that two cars get to sit indoors, while the other two sit outdoors. My 1998 Mazda Protege and my husband's 2010 Chevy Impala are the two outside cars.

My husband usually parks the Impala right outside our garage. When we want to move one of the indoor cars, he drifts it down 20 feet or so, so that he can get by it. The driveway is about 100 feet long. (Yes, it sucks to shovel it when there's snow, and in the years that I lived here alone as a single gal, before marriage, I sometimes shoveled it out myself, before work.)

Guess what's been happening lately when he moves the car down: it's been attacked by the crazy robins, one in particular, but we've seen at least one other bird join in on occasion. They're just nuts.

The one bird can do this all day long. I worry about it harming itself. It flies at the rear-view mirrors and windows, where you can guess that it is fighting its reflection. But sometimes it flies at the non-reflective surfaces, such as bumpers.

There are marks from its attacks on the car: mud, scrapes, and bird feces. Yep, that's the unhappy truth. (And yes, you'd better wash that bird feces off quickly, as it's very hard on your paint.) We are lucky this is not a fancy car but a good old American TANK. The big black car is like dark matter. It absorbs light. It is practically invisible that way.

(How do I know this? I drove the Impala to my dentist appointment one day, and - in the age of Covid - sat in the front seat waiting for them to come out and get me. The hygienist, embarrassed, told me 15 minutes later that she had looked out 100 times, and not even SEEN the car out there. Yes, I said: It is huge, dark, and invisible!)

If you are sitting in the yard, you can hear the attacks. The thump sound as the bird hits its target, flutter flutter, scrape. We go and shoo it away, but it comes right back. My husband put towels and blankets over the windows, but they blew off, and got wet in the rain. He asked me if I had any balloons he could tie to the mirrors to dissuade it. He moved a nearby bird feeder to the other side of the yard.

The attacks are at least somewhat territorial. The bird attacks the car when it is down lower in the driveway. It does NOT attack the car when it is up in its original spot. So the simplest solution is just to move the car back up to its place in front of the garage.

So we solved the problem. We moved the car to go to Walmart. As I sat in the car in the driveway waiting to go, the bird sat in a nearby tree and GLARED at me. I wondered whether it would attack the car with me in it; I had my camera ready, just in case. But no, it didn't happen. Just that one surly bird-faced look.

So, what happened next? When we came home, we moved the car up to its usual spot, in front of the garage. The attacks stopped, for now. But I'm betting they'll be back again! Hello, Springtime, when the toads are hopping and the robins are crazy!

My soundtrack song for this odd bird posting is ABBA, with Under Attack.

Updated to add a link to suggestions for what to do about birds attacking cars. Useful suggestions: cover rear-view mirrors with socks, bags, or cardboard; get a fake rubber snake and put it on your car (love this!!! may have to try it, if I can find a rubber snake, but I'm not sure we have one!). Interesting possibility: hang CDs from strings above your car. Less useful: consider the color of your car (well, duh, it's black, now what?).