Boundary drama: Neighbour trying to scare birds out my garden? With disco mirrors!?

slackgarry

eddddy said

So if you appear unannoyed and don't react, the neighbour might get bored with doing silly stunts.

They also might ramp up their antics, 

thegreenone

I think that's one of the most bizarre things I've ever seen.

How about attaching a solar powered fan to your side to blow the smoke back to them?

Titus_Wadd

They look like quite new houses; is the builder still on site and selling?  Developers are quite precious about the "look" of an estate while they are still building and selling.  Always worth looking at your covenants in your deeds for a similar reason, that it might be quite limiting as to the type and scale of any erections (yes I am a child!)

I agree with Weird; keep to the moral high ground and don't engage with them.  

Before you escalate and report to your estate management company or council please stay safe...our neighbours from hell became violent.  Once you start reporting incidents you might suffer retaliation so that genie can't be put back in its bottle.  Consider whether or not that suits your situation.  I'd try to ignore whilst logging everything to start with.

Monitor what happens when and log incidents on your calendar.  Your council website will likely have a downloadable template for an Anti-Social Behaviour log.  If you report to the council they will set you homework to complete one of these, so if you can start one now you'll be already further along in their long slow process.  

If there isn't a column for "how it made you feel" add this whenever you log an event.  ASB action requires there to be "harm" and it is very hard to recall and sound convincing 6 months later and recording the effect something has on you at the time is powerful.  Individual incidents might not seem that serious to an official, but the cumulative impact is important - you might have to spell this out and remind them of this.

Our council doesn't get involved in "neighbour disputes" and has robust gate-keeping barriers in place.  However just because the council may initially fob you off, keep to the "retreat and do nothing in retaliation mode" - [a "neighbour dispute is more about both sides giving as good as they get, whereas ASB and harassment are not].

We report incident simultaneously to council and police but what often happens is the council will not act until the police force has filed their case as no further action.  Sometimes you aren't specifically told that a case has been filed.  Often the police enquiry takes 6 months and beyond, by which time the Council will consider an incident to have "timed out".  Keep this 6 months in mind and don't be too polite to ask the police for an update well before this point.  If the police decide on no action ask them to collate all reports as ASB/Harassment going forward.  Next time remind them of this.  In our experience this doesn't happen automatically.  If you want to reignite action from the council at this stage have all your log entries ready to forward to them whether they request it or not and play up the "harm".  The harm you experience is not measured against the harm your ASB case worker might feel it's your harm that matters.

Finally, if you have disabilities or any protected characteristics tell the authorities and keep reminding them.  [I can't answer the phone and even though I ask as a reasonable adjustment for emails only, the police in particular tend to phone and the request for email may not be noticed by the next officer who is handed the case to deal with].   Any hint of "name-calling" which references the protected characteristic is a hate crime and dealt with (or should be) more urgently and with greater scrutiny.  It is difficult to press home if you have a specific vulnerability but it is worth doing at the out set and keep reminding the powers that be.  Don't assume that a PC who comes to investigate has any of the info you gave in your 101 or 99 phone call, always start at the beginning of the incident and tell the whole tale again; then reference your log and the history of incidents.

I think that's most of my experience re ASB but there's more info on the ASBHelp website.  Although v busy with limited resources, they will help if you need specific advice or if you want to initiate a ASB Case Review (formerly known as The Community Trigger).   The case review also tends to be limited to the previous 6 months of incidents so always keep that time frame in mind.  ASBHelp with help if you feel you have been refused a case review by inappropriately narrow criteria being applied.  There's lots of info on their website [I don't work for them].

Apologies for the wall of text, but maybe it will help someone.  Top priority : stay safe!

ETA: play (quietly but audibly) disco music when they light up their ciggies...Disco Duck by Rick Dees (not something boogilicious!) would be my recommendation...3 repeats should drive them indoors!

Silvertabby

Titus_Wadd said:

They look like quite new houses; is the builder still on site and selling?  Developers are quite precious about the "look" of an estate while they are still building and selling.  Always worth looking at your covenants in your deeds for a similar reason, that it might be quite limiting as to the type and scale of any erections (yes I am a child!)

I agree with Weird; keep to the moral high ground and don't engage with them.  

Before you escalate and report to your estate management company or council please stay safe...our neighbours from hell became violent.  Once you start reporting incidents you might suffer retaliation so that genie can't be put back in its bottle.  Consider whether or not that suits your situation.  I'd try to ignore whilst logging everything to start with.

Monitor what happens when and log incidents on your calendar.  Your council website will likely have a downloadable template for an Anti-Social Behaviour log.  If you report to the council they will set you homework to complete one of these, so if you can start one now you'll be already further along in their long slow process.  

If there isn't a column for "how it made you feel" add this whenever you log an event.  ASB action requires there to be "harm" and it is very hard to recall and sound convincing 6 months later and recording the effect something has on you at the time is powerful.  Individual incidents might not seem that serious to an official, but the cumulative impact is important - you might have to spell this out and remind them of this.

Our council doesn't get involved in "neighbour disputes" and has robust gate-keeping barriers in place.  However just because the council may initially fob you off, keep to the "retreat and do nothing in retaliation mode" - [a "neighbour dispute is more about both sides giving as good as they get, whereas ASB and harassment are not].

We report incident simultaneously to council and police but what often happens is the council will not act until the police force has filed their case as no further action.  Sometimes you aren't specifically told that a case has been filed.  Often the police enquiry takes 6 months and beyond, by which time the Council will consider an incident to have "timed out".  Keep this 6 months in mind and don't be too polite to ask the police for an update well before this point.  If the police decide on no action ask them to collate all reports as ASB/Harassment going forward.  Next time remind them of this.  In our experience this doesn't happen automatically.  If you want to reignite action from the council at this stage have all your log entries ready to forward to them whether they request it or not and play up the "harm".  The harm you experience is not measured against the harm your ASB case worker might feel it's your harm that matters.

Finally, if you have disabilities or any protected characteristics tell the authorities and keep reminding them.  [I can't answer the phone and even though I ask as a reasonable adjustment for emails only, the police in particular tend to phone and the request for email may not be noticed by the next officer who is handed the case to deal with].   Any hint of "name-calling" which references the protected characteristic is a hate crime and dealt with (or should be) more urgently and with greater scrutiny.  It is difficult to press home if you have a specific vulnerability but it is worth doing at the out set and keep reminding the powers that be.  Don't assume that a PC who comes to investigate has any of the info you gave in your 101 or 99 phone call, always start at the beginning of the incident and tell the whole tale again; then reference your log and the history of incidents.

I think that's most of my experience re ASB but there's more info on the ASBHelp website.  Although v busy with limited resources, they will help if you need specific advice or if you want to initiate a ASB Case Review (formerly known as The Community Trigger).   The case review also tends to be limited to the previous 6 months of incidents so always keep that time frame in mind.  ASBHelp with help if you feel you have been refused a case review by inappropriately narrow criteria being applied.  There's lots of info on their website [I don't work for them].

Apologies for the wall of text, but maybe it will help someone.  Top priority : stay safe!

ETA: play (quietly but audibly) disco music when they light up their ciggies...Disco Duck by Rick Dees (not something boogilicious!) would be my recommendation...3 repeats should drive them indoors!

Not the same thing, but my sister had a flower shop with a deep awning over the window.  During bad weather, school kids would gather under the awning to 'hang out' and smoke.  Until she switched the shop radio to Classic FM.  Her customers didn't mind, but the schoolkids soon found somewhere else to go.

These neighbours don't sound the type to appreciate good music - try the 1812 Overture to start with!

pretamang

instead of putting up hanging baskets in front of them, maybe some bird boxes and bird feeders?

EssexHebridean

Question - are these just on the fence between your two gardens, or are they on the other two fences bordering the garden as well? 

propertyrental

Ownership of the fence is unlikely to be shared. Who owns it depends on either who paid for/erected it, or who the original developers allocated it to.

molerat

Silvertabby said:

These neighbours don't sound the type to appreciate good music - try the 1812 Overture to start with!

With real cannon ?

Section62

molerat said:

Silvertabby said:

These neighbours don't sound the type to appreciate good music - try the 1812 Overture to start with!

With real cannon ?

Now that would scare the birds away.

actually_a_llama

Thanks for the advice guys. It looks like ignore might be a good option. But I've read through everything, the humour is a relief. They're just garish to look at.

The boundary fence is indeed shared, whatever that means. They've done this sort of thing before but with cat spikes running the entire fence... most fell off. Again, no permission asked - just a random head peering into our garden glueing them down on the fence tops. The birds weren't bothered by them and even walked on them.

Tbh, I started spending most of my time down the gym the past couple years so I've kinda been able to detach from having our stint of good neighbours broken.

The birds are mostly left to enjoy the garden as a sort of undisturbed park so we regularly find collared doves, wood pigeons, blackbirds, house sparrows, magpies or other birds very close to our windows.

We think it's the feral pidgies this neighbour doesn't like, there's a some regulars and we did avoid all bird feeding for a while but they're persistent so you just adapt, reduce or stop feeding if they flock. We never leave food out overnight; there's certainly no rats or mice.

Three wood pigeons, a feral pigeon, one collared dove and three magpies out back currently - magpies like shiny things; they're stood next to them cackling.. so clearly the flat disco balls aren't working 🤷.