I live in the woods of northern Michigan in a home sided with T-1-11. For some reason, my siding is being destroyed by woodpeckers! Some of the holes are enormous. The birds usually attack when I am not at home, so shooting them is not much of an option( nearby windows are not helpful either). Other than constantly filling the holes with caulk, what can I do to keep these birds away from my siding?
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Hi duane,
Believe it or not we have the same problem here in Tucson. They are noisy little buggers! Here's a site that might help. We have owl statues around, but they soon ignore them!
<http://www.birds.cornell.edu/wp_about/control.html>
Move the owls periodically....like owls do in real life.Griff
We do. We also have a copper raven that we bought in Mexico. The doves hate it!!!
A copper raven?? Fascinating. Is it protected by coats and coats of some preservative or has it weathered to a pleasant looking green sheen?
I suppose I could risk sounding flippant and say "Move them more frequently!" but the question really is how frequently do you move the owls? I'm bothered by the same problem but found that if I move my one owl weekly (I try to remember to do it on Saturdays), it seems to do the trick. Maybe that's the trick or maybe my birds are more gullible than yours. Try varying the number of owls out there from week to week.
I'll pass along one other bit of advice I was given by a naturalist type acquaintance: on some occasions when relocating the owl string a thin (1/4" x 12-14") piece of colored ribbon around the owl so that it lays there in a "casual yet unpretentious" way. Seems the movement of the ribbon lends some credibility to the illusion. At least for us, if not the woodpeckers!
Hope this helps.Griff
The copper raven is turning a nice green hue. We leave it in the same spot on our back wall overlooking a wash. We were lucky enough to get it in Nogales, Mexico. The artisans down there are wonderful, and the prices were great. We bought it in 2005. Now, the bargains are not so good, either for us or the Mexican artisans. We have a family of real owls who come out every night. They are so cool and are so quiet. They hunt and come back in before dawn. We sometimes find little droplets of blood in our bird bath where they obviously wash before going into their nesting trees. I love the desert! It has taught me more about nature than I care to know. Woodpeckers often peck because they are looking for mates. Have you ever heard the sound of woodpeckers pecking on a tile roof?Thanks.
I have never heard the sound of woodpeckers on tile, but I did hear one go at a piece of corrugated steel culvert that was lying on the ground. It sounded like machine gun staccato. You'd think it would hurt, but that little pecker kept at it for about 10 minutes.
It wakes one up in the morning. We also have woodpeckers who drink out of our hummingbird feeders.
I was told that the pecking is to mark their territory. That was mentioned by way of explaining why woodpeckers at my abode were also banging away on my aluminum gutters. Made as much sense as anything else inasmuch as I could not fathom why else they'd be hammering away at something as impenetrable as a metal gutter.
All the houses around me have asphalt shingles so, if they peck at those, I can't hear it. What's the sound on tile? Deafening stattaco, a hollow tapping, or something more melodic?Griff
Carole4,
Great web site regarding my woodpecker problem. Thanks!
duanescott
You're welcome. We've been there and it is a great place to visit if you are the least bit interested in birds...It's in the Finger Lakes region of NY. Great wineries, too!!
They are after food. Bet you got some bugs in the wall.
You should see what the do to and ICF block when the bugs go into the cracks. Them little peckers can produce a cloud of foam.
Get a cat. Tie suet in trees about 20 feet away. Put 1/4 inch hardware cloth on it so other critters can't get at it.
Kill the insects that lie underneath that woodpeckers hear..
Woodpeckers don't poke holes in anything that doesn't promise rewards for their effort.. They may do a few test taps to listen for insect activity which results but hearing none they will not bother digging holes..
I too had been told that the peckers were going after insects under the siding and, although it didn't make sense to me (why would insects be under the siding?), I looked closely after I pulled a particularly chewed up board off.
Well, unless the insects are microscopic, I didn't see any nor any evidence of any infestation. Either on the board I pulled off or the house that was just uncovered. besides, most of the holes didn't go all the way through the board so, I wondered, why'd they give up after all that effort? Didn't make sense to me.
So, I'm sticking to my latest bit of info - that they're rapping on my house, wood and metal gutters both - to establish their territory and advise other birds in the area.
That, and trying to wake me up earlier than planned!Griff
The woodpeckers here in Tucson do peck on the mesquite trees in our back, but, you're right, they are establishing their territory. They are also calling for female woodpeckers!The funniest thing to me is to see one of these woodpeckers drink out of our hummingbird feeder.
Earlier this fall I was visiting my folks in Tucson as was startled awake every morning with a woodpecker slamming away on the furnace exhaust flue. Actually it turned out he was pecking on the metal cap - my dad thought dead bugs were collecting up there.
LOL....I know what you mean. Sometimes they peck on the roof tiles!
That's true in the spring and early summer. The only reason birds establish territories is to raise young. Once the young have fledged, birds abandon their territories and roam either to fatten up for the winter or to fatten up for migration. If the woodpeckers are doing their thing after, say, July 1, it's likely they're after food. Maybe the insects were in the siding and the woodpeckers cleaned them out of there by the time you went looking.
Only if the constant knocking drove the insects crazy enough to leave on their own.
Very few holes made it all the way through the siding thickness. Actually, most of the holes were in the flat vertical piece at the end of the house by the corners - ? name? Cornerboard?
That piece was 3/4" thick and was solid - bugs were not inside it and when I looked after I removed it, none were behind it & none were on the backside of it.
I did the work in the Fall in preparation of having the house stained - long after the young left the nest - probably long after they fled south.Griff
Most woodpeckers don't migrate.. That's why siute is left out so they can live through the winter..
Really? I didn't know that.
I'll have to be a bit more observant during the winter to watch for the colored feathers on males.Griff
Around here, some do and some don't. Sapsuckers, for example, migrate. Some "migration" is really smaller scale movement. For example, I see robins year round, but they are migratory. The explanation is that the robins who nested around me probably migrated south and the robins who nested up in Canada are wintering in my yard. We sometimes get fooled into thinking the birds of a species we see in the winter are the same individuals as the ones we saw in the summer.Maybe Jgriff's woodpecker just had issues . . .
might want to contact the local extension service (or whatever they call the forest / farm services). sometimes local colleges have biology departments that could give advice. I vaguely remember someone telling me about decoys --- what's the bird that preys on woodpeckers??
Let me cut straight to the chase for you and it's all bad news. Nothing works, at least for long. Woodpeckers are a huge problem around here. In the past 30 years I've tried everything you can find on the internet and probably some things you can't. On one house we eventually had to install Hardipanels over the T1-11 on a gable end because the woodpeckers would peck a hole in a new sheet in one day.
The most success we'd had comes from stringing monofilament fishing line from the outside edge of the soffit to the bottom edge of the T1-11 every 6 or 8 inches.
Flordia,
Thanks for the fishing line idea... that I will do ASAP!
duanescott
Do an advanced search, and narrow it down to the last two months.
You'll find a lot, including people swearing that you have bugs when all you have is territorial critters.
Of course, it's quite possible that you have bugs,too -- you tell me.
You'll also find my quick-and-dirty patching technique using hole saws for cleaning up around the damage, and cutting new plugs, which works quite well after your house has already been damaged.*
But I'm starting to think of a fake predator system using one of those clothesline-on-a-pulley loops tied into a motor plugged into an intermittent timer.
Are ya with me? Start Tweakin'!
* But if you're Up North here in Mich, you might be having problems with Pileateds. If that is the case, my HS trick might look a little goofy -- you'd have to use saucer-to-dinnerplate-sized plugs to patch what those suckers do!
AitchKay
"But I'm starting to think of a fake predator system using one of those clothesline-on-a-pulley loops tied into a motor plugged into an intermittent timer."They will laugh at it.
"They will laugh at it."You're probably right, but I bet it would buy you more time than the stationary owls.AitchKay
Gentlemen, The Minnesota DNR publishes a book called "Woodworking for Wildlife" and in it they describe a woodpecker sounding box. It is a hollow cedar box about 4 inches square with the ends left open. They can be made from 2 to 4 feet long and they suggest putting out two or three of various lengths. They are screwed to the trunk of your trees and the woodpeckers prefer them because of the echo they produce when pecked. I haven't tried it yet but plan to this fall. Hope this helps. Dennis
Maybe, but it was less than 24 hours so it was moot. I shouldn't complain though, I've sure made a lot of money off woodpeckers. Maybe in this economy I should be raising woodpeckers and releasing them in gated communities.
try typing in search box
pesky peckers
Now you've got that song stuck in my head!
An earworm!
I know it goes to the tune of Winchester Cathedral, but I can't remember all of the words...
Woodpecker Destruction,
It's bringin' me down,
I stood there and watched as,
Those suckers chowed down.
AitchKay
Edited 11/20/2009 7:03 pm ET by AitchKay <!-- AITCHKAY -->
Edited 11/21/2009 1:41 pm ET by AitchKay