A bird appears to have crawled into a shower vent on the outside of my house, and is now halfway down the wall in my son's bedroom.
I can hear it scrabbling around and tweeting, obviously pissed off and unable to get out.
I can't reach in as the hole is too small.
I've tried banging on the internal wall, but other than that I'm fresh out of ideas.
What would STW do?
Do you have a small cat?
Drop a turd down the gap?
Leave it, it'll be dead in a day
Then, do you have a small dog?
But what kills a dog?
Ignore it and wait for it to die, or cut a hole in the wall to get it out. Not a lot of other options.
Won't the smell permeate through the wall?
Borrow a snake?
being serious for a minute : surely the shower vent has a pipe or flex hose attached so how did the bird bypass this?, could the bird have got in the eaves of the house and slid past the wall plate and into the cavity?
I wouldn't leave it there dead. It will stink and if easily accessible to flies you may get invaded.
Won't the smell permeate through the wall?
Nah, it happens more than you'd think and it won't really smell. (Unless it is an emu or something)
If it was a rat however...
+onzadog
+somafunk
Do you have two halves lying around that you could put together to make a whole? The bird could then just fly out.
I had birds nesting inside the top of a wall a few years ago
Once they'd fledged I went up a ladder, checked they'd gone and filled the hole with a load of expanding foam
... heard a couple more scratching and tweeting that night 🙁
Wouldn't worry about the smell if it dies but you may get some flies. All a bit grim really.
Break the wall down & rescue it, otherwise your'e just a nasty bastid.
My uncle had this in a room he'd just finished wallpapering. He knew what the outcome would be if my Aunt heard the tweeting.
Let's just say the radio stayed on a lot for a few days...
The only vaguely sensible suggestion would be to remove the vent tube and grills (presumably it wasn't venting through an open cavity wall?) so the bird has a slim chance of heading for daylight.
The other option is to feed the vacuum hose down there and hope there isn't too much rubble to block it!
Do you have any airbricks that you could remove??
Is this poor birdie free yet?
Been able to get a tube down the hole to birdie to give it some food/water to keep it going while you dismantle your wall to free it?
It was all quiet this morning- I think it must be asleep.
Without demolishing the internal wall there was no way to get to it.
The wall outlet is about 3m away from the extractor fan in the shower, and the bird chirping was 1m below that- so it looks like the vent tube must have become dislodged.
So when I'm home, I've got a ball ache job of trying to reattach it and scooping out the bird....
🙁