Nat assumed that the birds were behaving strangely because they signified the end of autumn and the approaching winter. At some point in the story, Nat commented on the bird’s behavior to Mr. Trigg and pointed that the situation was expected. The weather did change but Nat had a strange encounter with a bird that attacked him through the bedroom window when he opened it. He, however, shrugged off the initial encounter, presuming that the bird reacted out of fear. The birds also attacked Nat’s children while they were asleep. He heard their screams and rushed to their bedroom to help them. Nat evacuated the young ones, who were visibly scared, and locked himself in their bedroom to fight off the birds.

Nat managed to kill some of the birds but when he left his house to bury the dead birds by the shore, he noticed an abnormally large number of gulls flying over the sea. News on the radio confirmed his encounter with the birds and their abnormal behavior. After the confirmation, Nat decided to secure the windows and the chimney bases.

"You think they would break in with the windows shut? Those wrens and robins and such? Why how could they?”

He did not answer. He was not thinking of the robins and the wrens. He was thinking of the gulls.

He went upstairs and worked there the rest of the morning, boarding the windows of the bedrooms, filling up the chimney bases.

The family survived the first attack but the birds came back through the chimney. The fire was waning, this forced Nat to light up a bunch of sticks and paper. This worked by burning the birds that attempted to gain access to the house, eventually keeping them out of the chimney.