A few times each week I am awoken by a BRAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAP sound of a damn woodpecker banging his empty head on my house. The dumb bird bangs away on our metal gutters so the sound really resonates. I don't want to shoot the bird but I'd be lying if I said I haven't thought about blasting it with a modified high end full auto airsoft gun.

Will a fake owl scare it away? Anyone else had this problem? If so what worked for you?

Probably not your problem but... I used to feed the birds a lot. Started putting out suet blocks, which drew lots of woodpeckers. Who made holes in my and all the neighbors houses. Oops. Stopped feeding them for a year and they're mostly gone.


I'm sure people will chime in and tell you that means you have bugs in your house, but that's BS. It doesn't have to mean anything other than that there's woodpeckers around.

Woody is protected, and the Red Cockaded and Ivory Billed are fully protected endangered chimney cap hammering birds.


We had one that loved up our chimney many years ago, and I put rubber snakes and plastic owls on the chimney, and Woody laughed and pecked all the harder.

BDDDDDDDDDink!!!!

BDDDDDDDDDink!!!!

BDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDink!!!!

Uncle Sam must have felt sorry for us and sent us to Okinawa, so we sold the house...

ha-ha-ha-HA-ha! ha-ha-ha-HA-ha! ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-Ha!

quote:

Originally posted by stickman428:
Will a fake owl scare it away?

No.

It used to crack me up that folks in NY would think that fake owls would solve their crow problem. Roughly 20,000 crows per flock and several flocks in and around Albany and all the while everyone was putting up owl decoys. A couple of guys with some 6-shot would have taken care of that problem in a day.

quote:

Anyone else had this problem? If so what worked for you?

I have. .22 worked like a charm.

This might be worth a try. Sound-activated big toy spider designed to frighten them off.

Fast forward to the 1-minute mark.



Link to original video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YWJQ_2DpEgM

We had a couple of these. We didn't have woodpeckers, though - they were for Halloween (door knocking sounds like woodpeckers, and activates them) They were great for putting around the door to impress trick-or-treaters.

Triple S.


Shoot


Shovel


Shut up



Or


Shoot
Saute
Serve

Had a similar situation. Had a pecker setup a home in my wall after making a neat 1 1/2" hole and pulling out insulation that was in his/her way. Didn't want to kill them so I covered the hole with aluminum and put up a small bird house next to the hole. They left and went to the back of the house to start anew. Pissed me off so I "aluminized" and put up another small bird house. Never saw them again.

YMMV

It's mating season and they hammer on whatever makes the loudest noise. Maybe he will quit after he gets some; maybe not.

quote:

Originally posted by Gustofer:

quote:

Originally posted by stickman428:
Will a fake owl scare it away?

No.

It used to crack me up that folks in NY would think that fake owls would solve their crow problem. Roughly 20,000 crows per flock and several flocks in and around Albany and all the while everyone was putting up owl decoys. A couple of guys with some 6-shot would have taken care of that problem in a day.

quote:

Anyone else had this problem? If so what worked for you?

I have. .22 worked like a charm.

LOL! As someone who hunts crows we use an owl to attract them.... some dumb people.

To the OP my brother used a few of my crow decoys to stop bluejays from peckin at his house. They work but look like you have 24/7 halloween decorations. It also helped that they blow in the wind a bit.

Fake owls do not work....

We used to have one that attacked the chimney cap at the crack of dawn. It echoed throughout the house and sounded like Rosie the Riveter up there. I always thought he was sharpening his beak, but the mating season thing makes sense to me now.

I need to get the bird to leave. If it moves away from pecking on the gutters and starts pecking on the wood it's gonna be a royal pain to get up there to fix things.

The wood pecker enjoys pecking on this corner of the house. As you can see it's pretty high up.

The crow idea seems intetesting.

I have a ton of small holes in the trim of my house thanks to those little bastards. I'm going to have to replace all of the trim with PVC.

We had a woodpecker a few weeks back that loved to go "full auto" on our neighbor's two story house gutter between 7:00 and 8:00am pretty regularly. Fortunately it is on the opposite side of where our bedrooms are and during the week we are already up by then as well. We actually had quite a few Woodpeckers flying around, yes here in our South Florida neighborhood. It's funny when you see people mention nuisance critters of one kind or another and how often they are supposedly classified as protected or endangered. If anything their populations have continued to grow to alarmingly common levels.

Did I mention that Woodpeckers have a strong taste for ripe mangos? Year after year I have gone out to our trees to pick a nice ripe mango off the tree before it drops to the ground only to find a 1" hole all the way down to seed on the other side of the mango. You have to be really vigilant to make sure you are getting to the mangos before they do and pick them several at a time as they get ripe. If they fall on the ground, the ducks will eat them too and leave only a completely dry seed. Recently though the Woodpeckers have been MIA which I suspect may be because we always have a number of Blue Jays around that may have finally driven them off. They seem almost as territorial as Mockingbirds. The Jays mostly just eat the bugs off the trees and the yard so they are welcome and nice to have around. Only on the rare occasion have they gotten into a mango. The Jays also don't have the taunting and somewhat annoying Woody Woodpecker "laugh".

The only problem that I've had has been Northern Flickers that will hit my chimney cap in the spring. They will "drum" to attract a mate, and the metal makes a better noise than just plain wood. I also have Hairy Woodpeckers and Pileated Woodpeckers around, but they never try to get through the siding or trim on the house.....I have several dead trees and stumps in the woods near the house that makes for a much better nest.

Edit: Here's one of the Pileated Woodpeckers banging away on a stump. The tree fell years ago (snapped off about 15 feet above ground).

This message has been edited. Last edited by: Sgt Neutron,

I had that problem several years ago, but with a pair of woodys. It went on for several days, until my 10/22 ended one of them's activities. The other one left, never to be heard from again.

quote:

Originally posted by Bigboreshooter:
I had that problem several years ago, but with a pair of woodys. It went on for several days, until my 10/22 ended one of them's activities. The other one left, never to be heard from again.

We don't have gutters, but the fools like to get on top of my TV antenna and bang away. Since the mast is secured to the garage wall, it resonates in the garage. I just step out and run them off. Seems to work for a few days, and then I hear them on the neighbors' tin roofs of their horse "mare motels".
 

every morning between 5 and 515 I get Woody and his entourage beating away on my house

they go after my satellite dish, eaves troughing, canopy...anything that makes a noise

out of all the birds I like to see and hear, the woodpecker is NOT one of them

if I could make them ALL go away I would

quote:

A few times each week I am awoken by a BRAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAP sound

I'm pretty sure that is the same sound the A-10 makes with it's gun. That is the sound of freedom. Why do you hate freedom?

I also have Pileated Woodpeckers. The giant economy sized pecker. Wake me up regularly. I have an animal skull hanging on my patio and a small woodpecker will occasionally tap on it!