Neighbour issue

LegacyUser

We live in a semid, our young son is autistic.

We’ve been getting on fine with our neighbour who is a single woman living on her own.

My husband even called her when she was burgled last year and stayed on her property until she came back home.

Recently she’s been acting more and more strange. She is known to have had mental health problems in the past.

It all started when we started to leave the odd slice of bread out for the birds in the morning in our back garden.

It attracted a lot of birds. She began to bang on the capstone of our ajoining wall with a trowel very loudly and then proceeded to go back inside and what sounded like her rolling a marble around her sink in her ensuite for at least 20 minutes.

The sounds terrified our son who is autistic.

She started the same thing this morning and after we didn’t throw anything out for the birds at all.

I had it out with her and she accused us of being noisy. We never have any music / TV on and our son is always alseeep by 8am so we are always quiet at night.

If it was just me I wouldn’t care, but its really disturbing our little lad who is now afraid to go out and play in the back garden.

Please is there anything we can do?

Tokyo

I'd imagine the neighbour was banging the trowel to scare off the birds coming into the garden, rather than deliberately trying to antagonise you or your child. As you said yourself, the bread you were throwing out was attracting a lot of birds, and while you might want that around your garden, she may not.

I appreciate that you have an autistic son, and that you are concerned about how the noise might affect him, but living in a semi detached house is always going to come with a certain amount of noise, and a certain amount of compromises when it comes to neighbours. And as such I think you went to far by "having it out with her" rather than politely asking her to take it a bit easier. At the end of the day you are asking your neighbour to make compromises in terms of noise, or what she does in her own back garden, and as such, shouting at her is going to achieve nothing.

Dellnum

Okay there needs to be a compromise here. See, your neighbour probably doesn't like large groups of birds landing near her garden and maybe leaving their droppings around, and so she is trying to frighten them off by making noise. Maybe she didn't realize that you were encouraging these birds and then when you attacked her she just came out with accusing you of making noise too. So what you now need to do is have a chat with her again, quit leaving the bread out and just ask explain to her that you didn't realize that the birds were disturbing her and then my guess is that all of this will blow over;

thefeatheredcat

Did she admit when confronted to making the noises to scare away the birds or was she perhaps gardening in the morning and has problems with her sink?

Part and parcel of living in a semi d (and terraced houses), especially the more modern ones, is the lack of sound proofing between the homes, like hearing eachother going up and down the stairs, arguments, and children and pets in the house.

It's possible that you are much louder than you think you are and that maybe in certain rooms, the sounds vibrate louder than you would have thought. And maybe your neighbour has been hearing these noises for a long time and has given allowances that you have a child and that it's just bad soundproofing and nothing that she herself - if she were renting for example - could directly do except put up with it and let it become background noise without making an issue about everyday life in your house being noisy and loud to her.

Even if she doesn't want birds, she may not have known that they were attracted because of bread being put out for them. If she has fruit trees or even strawberries she might not want them around. And she may not want birds being attracted into her garden, as birds can be very territorial even towards humans (especially magpies, although blackbirds and robins will regularly give out anyway) and you might think you're just getting the odd friendly bird like a pigeon or robin, thrush, blue-tit or wren, but might be attracting others too, like crows. And not just birds either, rats will get the whiff of it and might nest in either garden - and from direct experience are very able to dig underneath and into compost bins - and both could attract cats and pregnant feral females, and insects as a knock on effect (even slugs are attracted to the smell of dry cat food).

It's possible that her actions were not related to your activity and might not have known why loads of birds suddenly were hanging around. Clapping of the hands (loudly) is a good way to scare off birds, it does work as often I have to scare an unsuspecting bird off the ground from the cat who is about to pounce. Maybe that might be a more suitable way for her to scare them off? I think you should chat with her again in a non confrontational way.

username123

I wonder what the marble in the sink noise is? I live in an apartment and hear what I would describe as a coin rolling on tiles often from one apartments ensuite - Ive always wondered what it was, now you have me thinking that there is some normal household appliance or bathroom device that makes that noise.

Anyway, there has to be some give and take when you live in a semi d - its likely that yourself, husband and child combined DO make more noise that this woman.

I appreciate that your son is autistic and the noises terrify him, but no matter who lived next door, there would be noises and what you have described is mild compared to some of the drug fuelled parties Ive personally been subjected to.

If noises from an adjoining property are going to be a huge issue for your son going forward, then maybe you could look at investing in some kind of sound proofing or moving to a more sound isolated property?