Woodpeckers

[mylash]

My southen house is a cedar siding house, in a forested area of western TN. We are not there all of the time, just when we have business in the area - the house has been for sale for a long time, but no buyers are roaming around. However, this month, we noticed three holes in the siding, one at 12 feet up, the others over 18ft.. Watching the holes for a while showed that woodpeckers had made them, and were nesting in the walls. We found one dead woodpecker in the attic - obviously it couldn't find it's hole, and some damage on an interior wall nearby.

How can I get rid of the woodpeckers that are in the walls, and how do I stop them drilling more huge holes in the siding?

Mylash

[beenthere]

Welcome to the forum.

I also have cedar siding (board and batten) and trouble with woodpeckers (however, not clean through into the house!!!!).

But I have had holes reach almost through the 1/2" SYP plywood.

I have had success putting up rat traps baited with suet (beef fat). Seems there are only a select few woodpeckers that 'peck' on the house, and catching them in the traps stops their activity (until sometime later when another takes on the house as its apparent territory).

Also, when I hear one on the house, out comes the shotgun. Sometimes that works, sometimes it doesn't.

I have a couple hole saws to drill out a 'plug' in the siding encompassing the 'hole' and another that makes a blank from a cedar board to glue into the hole. It matches pretty well.

Some hardware cloth over the big holes should keep them from entering the house walls. Sorry to hear of your serious problem.

[mylash]

I will try the hole saw repair. That is a very good idea, thank you. I will also try to catch the darned things. People do not realize just how much damage those birds are able to do to a house.

Mylash

[Pat]

I heard a tapping the other day and on investigating there was a peckerwood trying to drill the corner trim of my vinyl siding. Anyone know if they will actualy persist enough to damage the plastic siding?????? If damage is unlikely I'll just chuckle and let it go. Otherwise the bird might have an ACCIDENT.

[img]/forums/images/icons/smile.gif[/img] Pat [img]/forums/images/icons/smile.gif[/img]

[egon]

I'm not sure but in many cases the obnoxious bird is definining his territory buy making noise. There may be a last resort solution.

Egon

[mylash]

Found another hole today. We are not in the house more than a couple of hours a day, when we are down here - I have the Airstream set up to live in - way more comfortable, and we did not hear the bird destroying another area of the house. If we can't sell the place soon, there will be nothing left to sell - nobody will buy a house full of holes.

mylash

[Pat]

I'm thinking you might have to do something drastic to prevent economic loss. Apparently you aren't there enough to ride "shotgun" on the place (BB gun?) In lieu of hiring a teenager wth a pellet gun you might think ultrasonics. Randomly activated ultrasonic unit with warbling or sliding notes has been effective for me with other pests (cats and dogs) and should make birds uncomfortable enough to not stay long enough to do damage.

Loud ultrasonic noise will not bother neighbors. It will not penetrate verry well through foilage but will make the immediate surrounds of the projector a very uncomfortable place for birds. Their hearing extends into the ultrasonic spectrum so they will hear the noise just fine even though you don't. It will also BUG (bother) most other wild critterswho come close to the house if it is loud enough.

The various units I have used/seen had selectable outputs so you could optimize for who you irritate and who you don't (frequencies used) and could be set to run continuously or to come on for short periods at random times. Random is best so the critters don't get used to it and tend to ignore it. On random setting, my units come on a few times a minute for a few seconds. Dogs, cats, coons, etc. just refuse to hang out around these things. For you and I it would be like a loud siren going off next to us at random... we'd leave the area.

My best units run on (I don't recall) 6, 9, or 12 volts DC which is supplied by a small plug in unit that came with 25 ft or so of low voltage entension cord in my case but would run fine off a battery supply. For a fancy installation yo could use a solar panel to charge the batery and a photocell to turn it off at night since the birds don't attack at night. That would conserve energy and reduce the battery and solar panel requirements. There are several sources of the ultrasonics on the web.

[img]/forums/images/icons/smile.gif[/img] [img]/forums/images/icons/smile.gif[/img] Pat [img]/forums/images/icons/smile.gif[/img] [img]/forums/images/icons/smile.gif[/img]

[mylash]

Thank you, that is something I will look into. I have had some success scaringthe birds off, by jumping up an down in the attic, screaming, so sonic effects do work. [img]/forums/images/icons/smile.gif[/img] Having an ultra sonic source doing all of the time is worth the effort.

Mylash

[MRB]

We had that problem on our Cedar sided shop. We hung rubber snakes on the front and back of the building and it works at keeping the birds away.

[mylash]

Our attempts to ride the area of the problem failed, but fortunately we sold the house.. no more problem. We now live full time, in Indiana, where no pests have found us yet.

Mylash