A woman and her family say they are being terrorised by birds “pelting themselves” at the door of their business.

In a scene not dissimilar to the cult Hitchcock movie The Birds, Victoria Hunt, began hearing the crows outside the Lodge pub and shop in North Tuddenham, near Dereham, at 4am on Monday.

And the 47-year-old, who owns the firm and lives at the site with her husband Gavin, say they have been “patrolling” the outside of the building ever since - and they've no idea why.

“They are so noisy - I didn’t actually understand how much noise they make,” said Mrs Hunt.

“I came downstairs and they were just pelting themselves at the door.”

Leaving the shop has become an intimidating experience.

“You don’t relish going out there, because they are much bigger than what you anticipate them to be. I’ve never seen a crow close up and I thought it would be blackbird-sized - it is not,” said Mrs Hunt.

Dereham Times: Victoria Hunt and her husbandVictoria Hunt and her husband (Image: Archant)

“They don’t seem to be coming when there’s customers directly at the shop, they’re not dive-bombing on people or anything,” said Mrs Hunt.

“But when there’s nobody there, they’re sweeping down and patrolling. They walk up and down past the shop door,” she added.

The family have tried different methods to deter the creatures, as they suspect they are confused by their own reflections in the glass.

“They were still pecking their beaks on the door at 7am today,” said Mrs Hunt, who added that her husband thought the noise may have been a customer knocking.

“They are actually trying to pull out the seals of the glass, and the door handle is now really scratched, from where they’ve been sitting on it.”

Having posted footage of the siege on social media, Mrs Hunt is starting to get some solutions to her problem.

She has placed wire chains on the outside of the door to stop the bird’s seeing own reflection, which appears to have “calmed them down” to an extent.

A more permanent solution may be to buy a toy owl.

“Someone said the only thing that stopped them was a fake owl, which they put in the window. So we may try that if these chains don’t do the trick,” said Mrs Hunt.