Reprinted from an Aug 26, 2007 column in the Morgantown Dominion Post
I have some friends who has woodpeckers. OK, my friends don’t have woodpeckers, but their Greystone house gets hammered every summer by woodpeckers. The damage has been excessive, and the pecking noise is also very bothersome to say the least.
Woodpeckers drum on houses for four reasons; to establish territory, to find insects in the siding for food, to build nests, and for no apparent reason at all. They seem to like cedar, but they will also drum on aluminum siding, down spouts, chimneys, vents, and fascia boards. Houses with cedar clapboards that are near forests seem to suffer the most damage. Sounds like some Greystone homes, doesn’t it?
My latest issue of the Journal of Wildlife Management has an article reviewing various techniques to reduce woodpecker damage to homes. My guess is that the damage my friend’s home receives is not isolated and that many homes in our area are subject to woodpecker damage, so I thought I’d review the results of this study.
There are six species of birds that damage homes in our area; the pileated woodpecker, the northern flicker, the red-bellied woodpecker, downy woodpeckers, hairy woodpeckers, and yellow-bellied sapsuckers. One relatively recent study showed that on average the yearly damage to affected homes is $300, but adding up all the damage caused to all homes is into the millions of dollars.
Since songbirds are protected under federal law, killing the culprits is not an option. People have tried tons of things to keep woodpeckers from hammering their homes. Repellents placed on the wood didn’t work. Placing mirrors on the house didn’t work. Placing artificial snakes and owls around the house didn’t work (at least not very well). So, what’s an home owner to do?
In this study, they tested Prowler Owls (life-size plastic owls with extendable wings), Irri-Tape (silver reflective streamers suspended from string attached to eaves and siding), the Bird Pro Sound System (plays downy woodpecker distress calls followed by call of a hawk, to scare birds), Scare-Eyes (bright orange and yellow plastic holographic eyes strung on fishing line), suet feeders, and roost boxes. (You can review these and other deterrents by going to Bird-X, Inc. on the Internet. The suet feeders were placed as alternative food for the birds, so they would not drill into the homes. The roost boxes were placed as an attempt to reduce cavity excavation in houses.
This study was done in New York and only downy and hairy woodpeckers were observed doing damage. The homeowners there reported that these two species did most of the damage while the yellow-bellied sapsucker drummed the most on gutters and down spouts. Of 16 homes that were damaged by woodpeckers, all of them were earth colored. Hmmm. Of those, 75 percent were stained, while 25 percent were painted. Most of the homes had cedar shakes siding, some had cedar clapboards, grooved plywood, or tongue-and-groove wood. Birds seemed to avoid homes in open grassy areas with few or no shade trees.
None of the above methods was completely successful, but the Irri-Tape reduced damage the most. It eliminated damage in 50 percent of the times it was used. The bird sound system and the prowler owls eliminated damage in one of six trials. Suet placed around homes only reduced damage in one of ten trials. White or brightly colored painted homes had the least damage. The authors of the study suggested that if you own an earth colored cedar home, and your woodpecker damage continues, you might want to cover your home with aluminum or vinyl siding. Hmmm. Can you say .... "expensive?"
