Woodpeckers

For the last two or three years, and only for a few months there are these woodpeckers that love pecking on my house at 6am. Its incredibly loud and it took me a while to figure out what the noise was.

Every year I could only hear one, now there are two. One pecks and then shortly thereafter the other one goes at it. One is right next to my bedroom, very convenient. Not only do they wake me up, but they are damaging the wood trim around the house.

Anyone have a clue how to coerce them into moving?

J

Get some woodpecker suet. They will eat that first, then the house.

You have bugs in the wood of your house.

In my case, I had carpenter bees (big fat bastards that somehow fly anyway and live in tiny holes in hard to replace house parts). I'm not sure if the creasote killed the bees or the woodpeckers first but both are gone now.

If woodpeckers are consistently going at your house, I'd be more worried about what sort of bugs they're hearing inside the timbers than the woodpeckers themselves.

EDIT: GPS beat me to it.

I was thinking more along the lines of some mating season or something like that. I had the house tented recently ... I doubt it there is any bugs, but could be.

J

In mating season, the find the loudest thing to peck against. They love tin roofs. It doesn't stop until they get some lovin'. Always first thing in the am, when you are trying to sleep in.

sachilles wrote: In mating season, the find the loudest thing to peck against. They love tin roofs. It doesn't stop until they get some lovin'. Always first thing in the am, when you are trying to sleep in.

So you're saying he should berkeley them?

Best thing to stop them is a 22. Theoretically, of course, and save the Wales while you're at it.

A good repellant is made by taking some strips of mylar or whatever, I used heat shielding left over from car projects, but something shiny, cut into like 1" or 2" x 2'-ish lengths and nail them up by the rafters or wherever the suckers like to peck. This distracts them. I've read that they will peck anything not food related when in mating season. They will also build a nest in your wall. Usually up at the top of the roof where you can't reach it. I blew almost five bills on a ladder to reach the hole the little bastards made.

I've also read that the fake owls will shoe them away. For a day, then they come right back. The fake owls with the moveable heads will shoe them away for 3 days.

Giant Purple Snorklewacker wrote: You have bugs in the wood of your house. In my case, I had carpenter bees (big fat bastards that somehow fly anyway and live in tiny holes in hard to replace house parts). I'm not sure if the creasote killed the bees or the woodpeckers first but both are gone now.

Same here. Not sure if it's good or not, but the woodpeckers did "solve" the carpenter bee problem I was having with the banister on my deck.

I have dozens of woodpeckers in my yard, and none of them peck on the house. I keep two suet feeders with the "woodpecker blend" of suet. Seems to keep them happy, even during mating season.

Pellet gun works great on the annoying ones, aim for the chest.

I see red-bellied woodpeckers around here, and every so often they'll actually visit my feeder, usually stocked wtih black oil sunflower seed. I've never had one peck on my house, but then there are an abundance of trees at the back of my lot, many of which have dead limbs.

Maybe you can give them another target. If they really do go for shiny loud things, a shiny sheet of stainlessl will be louder than your roof and should attract them fairly well. Just place it in the far corner of the yard on a tree or something.

They may not be looking for bugs.

My father had this problem and they were making a berkeleying mess of his house. He called the Audubon Society to find out what he could use to to discourage them. They said that the birds were doing it to mark their territory and that he shouldn't do anything to interfere with them.

We discovered that you can fire this stuff directly a cedar siding and it's barely noticeable.

That stuff is awesome, though I was only using it to get rid of a flock of sewer eagles / flying rats that wanted to take up residence in my father's barn.

Osterkraut wrote:

sachilles wrote: In mating season, the find the loudest thing to peck against. They love tin roofs. It doesn't stop until they get some lovin'. Always first thing in the am, when you are trying to sleep in.

So you're saying he should berkeley them?

Woodpeckers are probably a protected species and shouldn't be shot.

Brett_Murphy wrote: Woodpeckers are probably a protected species and shouldn't be shot.

That's the way I used to feel too, but now I'd be clubbing baby seals if they started waking my ass up every morning and wrecking my house.

Shotgun