Blackbirds ruining our life

[Fourandtwentyblackbirdsinmypie]

Okay, maybe a slight exaggeration there, but really.
We've lived in this house for 3 years now, and blackbirds nest in the roof.
All. Year. Round.
Their gap seems to be directly above our bedroom window, meaning we can hear them all night scratching and moving about

In the morning, if we open the bedroom window they find this makes a useful perch for them to access their nest.

THEY ARE SO NOISY!

One nest a year wouldn't be an issue, but blackbirds dont ever leave their nests. The female and the offspring do, but the Male stays until he finds a new female. Then it starts all over again.

Is there any way we can get rid of them?

Our cat has brought 5 in in the past year and a bit, they still think it's a safe place to nest.

I know you cant move birds nests but are there any exceptions to this?! I'd love to have our bedroom window open this summer...

That baby is a blackbird. But the picture on the roof did look more starling (but it also looked a bit like a duck on my crap phone) if there is a hole in the roof I'm fairly confident it is starlings.

Young blackbirds are brown with speckled breasts. Definitely not black.

How about sticking up strips of tin foil for now or old CDs to see if that puts them off? Then block it up properly if they leave. Although I think crows like shiny things....not sure about starlings. But you don’t want them to think you’ve brought them a present!

Also you should have a bell on your cat. Domestic cats are destroying our wildlife at an astounding rate.

@NailsNeedDoing
The cat wears a loud bell...

Cats are very clever at learning to move without making the bell jingle when on bird patrol.

I can top that, pussycatinboots!

We normally get the odd Woodpigeon flying into a bedroom window - you hear a thud, then can see the dust print on the window after they've flown away (probably with a terrible headache).

Many years ago I was sitting in our living room on a warm August day. We have a bay window at the front and a single sash window at the back, which was wide open from the top. Our next door neighbour has an elder tree in his garden, which is laden with fruit by August. Wood pigeons love the berries and spend a lot of time in that tree. Something must have startled one of them because I heard a flutter of wings, looked up and what happened next was so fast I had no time to react, just gape in amazement. If you ever saw the old cartoon Wacky Races, it was like that. The pigeon flew in through the open back window, and proceeded at full speed through the room to the front window. When it got there it smashed through the glass, leaving a big round hole. The noise was so loud it was like a gunshot. People outside were stopping to look around for the source.

I dashed outside, expecting to find a dead or dying pigeon on the ground amongst the shards of glass, but there was no sign of it. I actually contacted a wildlife charity to ask about this and their tentative conclusion was that birds have very light bones, full of airholes, which makes them very resilient to impacts like this, so it was plausible that it had just carried on flying.

I don't often open that window more than an inch now.

OP you are so lucky! I would love to have a birds' nest in my garden or near a window. Blackbird song is the best song around and they are such sweet baby birds. Send them to me, please!

It could be worse.
I have jackdaws in the chimnies, a rookery opposite with between 80 and 150 birds depending on time of year.
I'm also in an area famous for murmerations of overwintering starlings. Those can be 50 000 plus birds...

Blackbird singing in the dead of night
Take these broken wings and learn to fly
All your life
You were only waiting for this moment to arise

doilook no one could possibly love being woken up constantly, for years, I cannot believe you love years of disturbed sleep.

We have starlings in our roof also. We phoned RSPCB. They're not protected species but birds nests in general are protected although you can move the nest if you have a valid reason I.e. you have to carry out repairs on your roof that cannot wait until they have moved on. In some areas there are volunteers that can help with this and can help you reestablish the nest near by. But if you dont have a valid reason (sorry I dont think noise is one) then you have to leave it alone until they leave, and then fill in the hole and take precautions so they cannot renest. We're leaving the nest for the time being. The whole in the roof is causing some damp but as the weather is good we can afford to leave it as long as its dealt with before Winter. The noise is driving my daughter insane thought as they're above her bedroom window.

Fall back on folklore passed down from childhood

"4 and 20 blackbirds, baked in a pie"

It's a blackbird!! The yellow ring round the eye is distinctive.

OP you have a starling problem. Can you see the difference in your pictures and the one that category12 has posted of a blackbird?
They will also sound very very different

Wow, I'd love that. We're blessed with so many birds round us, the dawn chorus is a delight as are the nests in the hedge by our lounge.

The may be starlings they are real noisy buggers.

3:21
Starling Murmuration Somerset Levels
YouTube app · dusktilldawn13
15 Mar 2012

This was filmed near my house, to give you an idea of the number of birds in a murmuration!

Try again!

Looks to me like definite starlings. I've moved house now and do miss my starlings in the roof. Wait until they've all stopped nesting and then put net or board up over the holes. They don't nest all year round, and if they can't get back in they'll move on somewhere else.

There are a lot of wrens about this year, anyone else notice that? And they are LOUD! And an owl kept me awake last night, but I consider myself very lucky to live where we have such a wide variety of birds, so I shan't complain.

We have a pair of wood pigeons who like perching on the chimney cowl and shouting down the chimney. We get metallic noises too as they move on the cowl..

The photo looks like a starling

OP at least it's not a mollymawk

Why are people so annoyed at having to share living spaces with animals? Where are they supposed to go? Our population is out of control. Leave the animals alone please

Bluntness100 can I suggest you contact your local county bat group through the Bat Conservation Trust? They may be able to give you advice, on them falling down your chimney at least.

The rescued bird is a blackbird (subadult male, hence bill and eyering not yet bright yellow). The bird on the roof is a starling.