woodpecker rounds

[Robert_in_NY]

You can always wrap your soffits and facia with metal as a last resort.

 

[TWINKLE_TOES]

Good job Bob,

Did you find the part on the web that lists it as an endangered species?

If it was "Jay" sized, it was probably not a red cockaded wood pecker they are much smaller. /w3tcompact/icons/wink.gif
Al

 

[beenthere]

I have board and batten cedar on my house, and numerous woodpecker holes through the cedar, through the black paper and through the 1/2" 5-ply sheathing. Shotgun works as you say, IF you are home. I found that rat traps, baited with suet, and hung on the house near the fresh hole work well too. I bait them when I see fresh activity, and usually nail (catch) one in the trap. The hole-making stops for awhile, making me think that either I caught the offender, OR the others get the message when they see their buddy hanging there on the side of the house. I too have plenty of trees to make holes in, but the house is probably in their territory and they are staking it out. Lots of research over the years to figure out a deterrent, but to my knowledge, nothing short of removal has been found. Flickers, red bellied, and downy are the worst offenders. I am happy that the pileated woodpeckers around here stick to the trees, and have not ventured to the house. They make serious holes.

 

[JoeR]

My builder once complained that applying metal may stop the damage, but it does not stop the bird. For some reason the woodpeckers would bang on the metal flashing around the top of his chimney. The noise would resonate all the way down into the fireplace, and make quite a racket. He said the woodpecker was notorious for doing this at 6:30 on a Saturday morning. Messing with his day off was not a good idea for the woodpecker. My builder also used his shotgun to restore sanity to his weekend.

Joe

 

[hayden]

The reddish brown ones are probably Flickers. The black and white would be a downey or hairy depending on the size. Hairy's are larger, not quite jay sized, but about like a cardinal. Downeys are smaller, closer to a finch in size. Flickers frequently attack houses. The solution is really very simple. Get plastic owls and hang them under the eves. They'll never bother you again.

 

[RobertN]

Yes, I found the Red Cockaded to be an endangered item, after it was cat bait.... Up to that time, I had not been close enough to get a good look at it. I have had my spotting scope out, but had never seen one that way.

It was a smaller bird than the one I got this morning. Also, I was able to positively id it from pictures on the web.

The one this morning, and the other last year, were the larger Jay sized bird.

 

[RobS]

<font color=blue>I am happy that the pileated woodpeckers around here stick to the trees, and have not ventured to the house. They make serious holes. </font color=blue>

Where I grew up we had a pileated woodpecker. He would go after the carpenter bees that were boring into the cedar siding. That bird could pull chunks of cedar off the house /w3tcompact/icons/shocked.gif Quite impressive, though my dad didn't think so at the time. He was a georgous bird and I got kind of used to seeing him around.

My mom ended up moving to a smaller place after my dad died and some time (10+ years) later I had occasion to drive back to the old house. As I'm driving in the lane, what do I see but a pileated woodpecker flying through the woods. Not sure if it was the same one or an offspring. Pretty cool though /w3tcompact/icons/smile.gif

 

[TerryinMD]

Robert,

I didn't see any mention of this, but you also should clean your gutters. Nice breeding ground for all kinds of critters and the Woodpeckers are just doing their job looking for a good meal.

We had the same problem until I put on the swing away metal gutter protectors to keep out leaves and catkins. Still have to go up clean the gutters periodicallyl, but not as often.

Terry

 

[RichZ]

Actually what is happening when a woodpecker bangs on metal is that the woodpecker is announcing that this is his territory. This happens from the middle of winter until the spring when the males mark out their territories. The males naturally drum on hollow trees, but they find that they can make an even loader sound on metal on the side of a house, so they drum on that.

Woodpeckers are actually very beneficial to trees, and have been know to save many trees that had borer infestations, by drilling out and eating the borers.

Rich
"What a long strange trip it's been."

 

[Tom_Trees]

<font color=blue>Get plastic owls and hang them under the eves. They'll never bother you again.</font color=blue>

I've found that putting suet cakes out in a wire hanger keeps them off the house. My siding is currently T1-11 with cedar corner trim, and they were really hitting the corner trim. Now it costs about $1.40 a week to keep them happy and off the house. I've got downy and hairy woodpeckers, red-heads, and red-bellied. I've also spotted some flickers from time to time. All is well except early spring, when the red-bellied male drums his dominance on my chimney surround ("who the *&^*^ is riveting at 7:00 AM on a Saturday" was my first thought the first year - now it's a sign of spring).

 

[RobertN]

I keep the guttes pretty clean so they drain proper. They did load up a little after the first rains, but I cleaned them up. We didn't hear woodpeckers till long after that...

That sounds like another goodf reason to keep the gutters clean though. I have helped clean other gutters that were really loaded; I can see why a wood pecker might like to poke around in the stuff.

 

[toddwulf]

Well, We've come full circle here. Robert in Shingle Springs get's an answer from me just up the road in Palcerville 2 1/2 months later. Don't know if this is a wives tale or not, buthaning a slab of Bacon away from the house will get the peckers mating instincts up in a dander ad they'll hange around it as opposed to your house. Just finishing a Cedar Shingle house and I suspect I'll get to try this out.

Luck to all. Todd in Placerville

 

[Tdog]

Luckily the peckerheads in my area do not pick on my house. There are plenty of dead pine trees around, due mostly to pine bark beatles, & they provide enough food & entertainment, apparently.

Here's my problem - - carpenter bees. My house is cypres & this bumble bee look-a-like is a frequent visitor. They are in my barn too. I've tried to hit them buzzing around with wasp/hornet spray, & I might as well have been slow motion. I couldn't even come close. Does anyone have any success stories in dealing with the house eaters?

 

[Anonymous Poster]

Carpenter bees and bumblebees are the two main pollinators (insects at least) left, since the mites have destroyed wild honeybee populations.. since my apples, pears and peaches don't do much without pollination, I let them be. However, I DO provide them plenty of open spots in the barn.. just gotta keep an eye on the beams to be sure there aren't too many close together. By the way, I have hit carpenters with several brands of hornet/wasp spray, they just shake it off and come back to check me out. Never been stung by one yet.

If you don't have need of the bees for early pollination (most are gone by late June, here) you might want to check with your extension agent for an effective control.

Or, you could bring em all here? I'll take em !

 

[CVHoss]

<font color=red>Here's my problem - - carpenter bees.</font color=red>

Badminton rackets. Go to Wally-World and pick up one of the cheap badminton sets with 4 rackets. Have dispatched hundreds of 'em like that. Does it get rid of 'em? Nope, but it does give you a certain degree of "revenge"./w3tcompact/icons/wink.gif

Hoss

 

[Richard]

My wife actually has, and wants ME to take the spray can, RUN AROUND THE YARD & WOODS and CHASE the buggers down as they are in their midflight..say...20 feet in the air. I keep trying to tell her (while maintining a straight face) that it will be rather difficult catching all of them "out in the open". I wonder where would she have me stop? Yard edge? Woods edge? Farm edge? (250 acres...pant pant pant...) /w3tcompact/icons/shocked.gif

Yes dear..hand me the can..I'll be happy to.../w3tcompact/icons/eyes.gif

 

[Tdog]

Thanks, badmitten rackets might be a possibility. It will probably do more to make me think I'm doing something than it will to have much effect the bee problem.

I am aware that these critters are pollenators - - its just that my house is made of wood, & the amount of bee-sawdust that collects in window sills & elsewhere tells me that I've got a real problem... sorta a risk-benefit situation. My gardens are doing fine - - it's my house & barn that suffer.

 

[patrickg]

I have used electric fly swatters to good effect, apply as in the case of the badmiton racket. For anyone thinking this is a delayed April fools joke it isn't as there really are electrick swatters and they work great, like a bug zapper without the light but looks like a small badmitton racket.

Now about birds trying to eat you out of house and home... There are store bought infra-red motion detecting ultrasonic pest thingies that put out a horrendously terrible sound (just too high up for humans to hear) when something warm bodied gets near. Uses little power, works for lots of criters, even deer. Lots of stuff that has been tried eventualy fails because the critters get used to the constant noise. The infra-red triggered ones don't let them get used to it. Every time the critter shows up this terrible ultrasonic cacophony turns on which is truly annoying to the critter. After the critter backs off it stops. If anything you get a Pavlovian response where the animal is trained to retreat from the sensor to turn off the racket.

I built a simple Rube Goldberg device that would quite likely keep peckerwoods off your house, deer out of your garden or flowerbeds, and other critters away from your XXXX as long as yor critters don't like thte hose turned on them out of the blue. It sure as "H" "E" double toothpicks kept dogs and our postman off my grass when I lived in town. A few years after I built/invented this thingy, I saw one in a catalog so it can't be that dumb.

You take a cheap (under $10) infra-red motion detecting security light (you know the kind with two flood lamps) and take the lamps out or remove the lamp holders. In the place of the light socket you wire in a water control solelnoid/valve from a discarded dish washer (got mine free from a used appliance repair place). (Hopefully yours will have been tossed for some other reason not because the valve quit.) OK, now you have an infra-red motion detecting water valve. Hook up a garden hose to the input to supply water and another hose and a sprinkler or nozzle to the output. Flip the "test" switch to the "test" position which defeats the photocell that keeps the lights from coming on in the daytime. In the test position when infra-red motion is detected the water will be turned on until infra-red motion ceases plus about 10 seconds. The turn off delay which is adjustable in "normal" operations is not functional in "test" mode and is reduced to a convenient time like about 10 seconds.

I used a rainbird sprinkler with great success. One guy nearly had his arm dislocated when his large dog on a leash was squatting in my landscaping to take a dump when the water came on. Neither the dog nor the "owner" got wet as the dog bolted when he heard the escaping air being purged from the system when the water came on. As the leash did not break, the man went with the dog. It trained my postman to use the sidewalk in only two days. Very little water is used as it only runs for 10 seconds after the "critter" leaves. In general I think everyone whose dog yanked them to escape the sound (or water if it was recently primed by another animal) thought that it was on a timer and they were just unlucky. Anyway I went from 4-5 doggy "lovenotes" per day in my landscaping to none starting with day one for as long as I used that system. I later went to ultrasonics when the neighborhood kids learned that if they played in my yard in their swim suits they would get sprayed. During water conservation times i SOCAL wasting water is a hanging offense so I went ultra-sonic.

My main reservation is that you might not have enough infra-red sensitivity to detect little birds very far away. Might work to keep them away from a particular place they peck but not protect a long run of eaves. A photoelectric sensor like is used for child safety to reverse a garage door or ring a doorbell when someone enters the store would work fine with a small bird or a bee for that matter. Anything that could block the beam would be detected and yo cold use water, ultrasonics or C-4 whatever you need to get the job done.

If anyone is electronically challenged but wants one of these things, just email me and I will scrawl out a schematic wiring diagram and post it.

Patrick