woodpecker rounds

Tom_Trees · Jan 28, 2002

<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 · Jan 29, 2002

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.

Anonymous Poster · Apr 2, 2002

A bit late to this one, as I browse thru the great boards here... but hey, I have some ideas..

First, ALL woodpeckers are migratory birds, except some 'resident' pileated woodies down in the very southern Gulf states. Hence, they are protected under the migratory bird treaty act Congress passed in the 30s. As a matter of fact most native birds ARE migratory, not just waterfowl... now I am not sayin you should just let them drill holes in your house looking for grubs, but just remember, if yer gonna shoot and shovel, don't forget the last point (shutup!)

Male woodies will find a nice 'drumming' post or tree, just like a male ruffed grouse, will find a nice log to boom on, and sage grouse and prairie chickens will boom on the flats, and a turkey will strut for his hens... problem is, your house makes SUCH good sound, carries a long ways, and he attracts lots of females. Two ways I can think of.. sting with bb gun, or the ever faithful mothballs. If you have ANY dead trees within 100 yards of the house, get em down.. they love em. I've got a couple snags about 250 yds from the house, across the creek, and I hear the males pounding their heads against the hollow one every spring.. sorta a harbinger, if you will. Of course, if he comes a poundin on my house, he'll learn that this is not a good place. Then again, I work from home, so I can just jump outside anytime I hear something and ding him with a bb gun.. (which is ALSO against the migratory bird treaty act called, 'harrassment of wild migratory birds') but of course, it IS harassment.. let the [censored] thing go back to the snags I left for him, purposefully.

There are always the rid a bird solutions, and the sticky stuff, but I have a chemical free attitude around my place, just too much I have seen with mistakes of past applications.

One neighbor of mine, has a real problem with a pair of pileated woodies.. and his log home. He ended up nailing 12 penny nails all over, then hanging aluminum pie tins to the nails... sure looked pretty, and he must have had 50 of the pie tins all over the house.. they stir in the slightest breeze and flash.. but now he has this red wasp problem..

toddwulf · Apr 3, 2002

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 · Apr 4, 2002

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 · Apr 4, 2002

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 · Apr 5, 2002

<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 · Apr 5, 2002

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 · Apr 7, 2002

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 · Apr 7, 2002

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