It’s like a movie set at our house lately. Not just any movie. You remember Alfred Hitchcock’s 1963 classic The Birds, based on a spooky Daphne du Maurier short story?

It was a new take on our feathered friends, all those menacing birds watching from the roofs and trees, ominously, ready to pounce.

The movie starred Rod Taylor, Jessica Tandy, Suzanne Pleshette and Tippi Hedren.

The remake, which is taking place in a genteel suburb in Brisbane’s north, stars, well … me.

And the birds. In this case the menacing winged ones are common (sometimes known as Indian) mynas. They are an introduced pest and they threaten native species so it’s hard to warm to them. Generally, I’m a bird lover and in my early teens I was a bird watcher – my bible was the Australian classic What Bird is That? By Neville W Cayley.

I wandered the countryside with that book tucked in a backpack and I would yank it out to identify birds I came across.

Now I find myself plagued by the pesky mynas that have taken to hanging around our house. It’s just this summer that they have become a problem. They tried to build nests under our back deck but I quickly put a stop to that. Word must have got out because soon afterwards they started to gather in numbers and now they appear to be haunting me. Worst of all they perch and poop on our back deck all day.

I started by just shooing them away but every time I went back inside the house they would be back, defiant, pooping just for spite.

I bought a new mop to clean up after them and then went back to Bunnings and got myself some bird repellent spray. I sprayed it all over the railings of our deck but to mock me, the birds took no notice of it and just pooped more.

Then I tried wrapping aluminium foil around the railings because I read that they don’t like reflective surfaces. It worked for a while but then I went outside on one occasion and there they were perched on the foil.

Now, when I go out, they are there on the roof and the power lines watching me and when I come home, they are still there. I swear there are more every day. It’s The Birds all over again!

I’m battling on several fronts now. There seem to be more flies this summer and I spend half the day swatting, the other half shooing the birds away. Now there’s an ant invasion to add insult to injury.

My wife reckons I should forget about the birds but I can’t so I’m moving to the next level. I have just gone online and ordered some plastic spikes to place along the railings to stop them from landing. My wife reckons this is a bridge too far.

“If that fails, what’s next?” she asks.

“A bazooka,” I reply. Just kidding.