Birds in the house happen! As much as I’m fascinated by birds, I don’t want them inside my home.
A bird gets in and it naturally panics trying to get back out. As it flutters around, the bird might soil your furniture or, worse, hurt itself!
Fortunately, I haven’t had many birds in the house but it has occurred. If a bird gets in, how can you safely get it back outdoors? What can you do to prevent birds from entering your home?
Read on to see what I did and what you can do to keep birds from accidentally wandering inside!
The Rare Panicked Visitors
Birds much prefer to stay outside, but once in a while, they fly right into your home! Why do they do this? As much as we wish it were the case, it’s not like birds want to hang out with us.
The reasons why this happens are usually related to survival. When I had a starling in my house, I’m pretty sure it saw a bird of prey, panicked, and took the nearest escape route: my open window!
I was sitting at the computer when I was suddenly distracted by the sound of fluttering wings. Sure enough, a starling had flown in and was trying to fly back out! The only problem was that it kept flying towards the ceiling.
Birds can also fly inside because they are attracted to lights at nighttime and during dim conditions. Leave a window or door open during migration and your well lit interior can act like a beacon.
The other main reason a bird flies into a home is because it’s a juvenile that doesn’t know any better. Sometimes, they are just looking for a nesting site and find themselves cut away from the outside world!
While birds can get out on their own, they’ll do much better if you can help them find the exit.
Ways To Help Birds Out Of Your House
A bird in a house is a problem but there’s no need to panic. There are some things you can do to safely get that bird back outside where it belongs.
Immediately remove pets and kids
When you find a bird in the house, first, you need to protect it from harm. That means immediately taking pet cats and dogs into another room and closing the door. Your pet might have never gone after a bird before, but that quickly changes when they notice one trapped in their home!
Give them a chance, and their carnivorous instincts will help them catch and kill that poor bird in a flash. As for children, they won’t try to harm the bird, but they might stress it with screams of fear, excitement, and/or joy.
Keep the bird from hiding in other parts of your home
After removing pets and children from the scene, you have to make sure that the bird doesn’t find its way into other parts of your home. Believe me, give a frightened bird a chance and it can make its way into open cabinets, bathrooms, and other odd hiding places!
Try to isolate it in one room by closing doors that lead to other parts of the house. If that’s not an option (it wasn’t for my starling incident!), turn off lights in adjacent rooms. Since birds are naturally attracted to light, this may keep it from wandering.
Don’t scare the bird!
Once you have the bird isolated as well as can be, you might be tempted to yell or wave your arms. Please resist the temptation and stay calm! Scaring birds essentially harms them because it raises their stress levels.
Just imagine how you would feel if a giant, dangerous-looking creature was making loud noises and crazy, unsettling movements. I bet I would panic!
That’s what birds do, and when that happens, they can hurt themselves by flying into windows or walls. It’s also a good way to scare it into another room or a weird hiding place.
Give it an exit
Instead of trying to scare the bird, make sure it has an obvious exit strategy. That would be a big open window or door that leads to the outdoors. First, pick a good window or door that the bird can use. Next, draw shades and cover all other windows, and close any other doors.
We want the trapped bird to see just one obvious exit. Dim the interior lights so the bird can notice light coming in through that exit and it will probably fly through it, all on its own. That’s what “my” starling did.
Guide the bird to the exit
But what if the bird doesn’t leave on it own? What if it sits still or hides behind your couch? If that happens, you’ve still got one trick up your sleeve. You’ll need to guide the bird back outside, but there won’t be any need to scream or wave your arms.
Get a sheet, hold it in front of you, and slowly move towards the bird. To the bird, you’ll look like a slowly moving wall and something it doesn’t want to fly into. As you guide it towards the exit, it will probably notice that brightly lit opening and fly to freedom.
Are there ways to prevent birds from flying into your home?
Birds rarely fly into a house but you can still do some things to make sure that never happens.
Keep windows and doors closed or use screens.
The easiest way to keep a bird from flying inside is to simply keep all of your windows and doors closed. So you want to open them and let the fresh air come in? No problem, just make sure they have screens.
If you are walking in and out a lot, or have the doors open and unscreened from some reason, keep an eye out for nearby birds. If they are too close to the window or door, wait until they fly off before opening them.
Hang reflective or shiny objects near entranceways
You can also keep birds from inviting themselves inside by scaring them away from doors and windows. This doesn’t mean making loud noises, lighting firecrackers, or throwing things at them. All you have to do is put up some reflective tape or other shiny objects.
For whatever reason, birds just don’t like shiny things, especially when they move. They don’t trust them and prefer to stay away. Put those things near doors and windows and birds probably won’t fly inside.
Try predator decoys at windows and doorways
You can also try decoys of owls and hawks. Install one of these at each entranceway and birds will stay away. Eventually, they will realize they are fake and might become used to them. To prevent that from happening, use decoys with glowing eyes or ones with heads and wings that move.
Yes, that could make for some odd animatronic décor, but it should work!
Turn off lights in rooms you aren’t using
Another idea is to eliminate any welcome signs. For a small bird, that would be a lit window or doorway. They fly to light, especially on dim days and at night. Turn off lights in rooms you aren’t using and you’ll do more than save energy.
You’ll also keep small birds from flying into your windows and killing themselves. If the window or door is open, turning off those lights will also turn off the “welcome, fly in here sign.”
Learn more: How to help injured birds?
Feeder placement
Yet one more thing we can do to keep birds from entering a house is to install feeders in the right places. Although it’s pretty neat to watch birds coming to a feeder just outside a window, at some point, a bird is going to come inside.
It will probably happen when you open that window to clean or fill the feeder. Avoid that possibility by installing feeders far from windows and doors. Put them in another part of the yard, especially within 10 or 15 feet of bushes. That way, when birds see a Cooper’s Hawk, they’ll fly there instead of into your house!