I had a problem with super-peckers when I lived in Tucson. I don't know what the heck those birds get fed when they're babies, but they grow up to be amazingly loud and HUGE.
During the mating season, they sit in the trees (or cacti) and scream. I mean, this super-loud, blood-curdling scream. They sound like children, and so it's especially unnerving - at 5am Saturday morning.
Then they peck... You guys are right about the "territory" thing... They do it for the sound - the louder, the better. In Tucson, many people have their air conditioners on the roofs of their homes, and so those made prime targets. To the occupants of the house, it sounded roughly like an AK-47 going off in the livingroom - at 5am Saturday morning.
...That's not even to mention the damage these little - peckers - could do to a home. I mean, they were a serious problem in my area.
At first, I was just really annoyed. I'd get up at 4:59am (how were these things able to nail down the exact minute every day to start their screaming and pounding?) and open a window beside their favorite perch and shoo them off. When they got used to my presence, I used a broom to "whack 'em." Unfortunately, over a period of two months, they got the picture that when the door or window opened, they were about to get "whacked," and so they'd fly off - and return the moment I went back inside. Talk about frustrating! At one point, they got so bold as to notice the opening door or window, and then step just out of range of a broom... Often screaming at the tops of their lungs when I made a swipe at them. They stopped doing that after I opened up a hose on them one morning (heh), but they were still smart enough to come back when I went back inside.
...So I went to Lowe's and bought a fake owl. That "scare" lasted about two days. The rubber snake lasted even less, and I think they actually pecked holes in the fake crows that I bought.
...Then I put beer cans on a wire... You know, the wind would blow and the cans would move and shine, causing flashes of light that were said to scare off birds. What a joke.
...So I finally broke down and went to Wal-Mart and bought a pellet gun. At this point I wanted a bazooka, but I lived in a quiet neighborhood and decided the quiet "puff" of a pellet gun would be a better idea than a large explosion or even a .22 caliber rifle (which I would have loved to use instead). I probably spent about $90 on the pellet rifle - and then $120 on a scope so that I wouldn't miss. :biggrin: Then I filled the pellet gun with hollowpoint pellets and spent an afternoon sighting the rifle in. It worked great, and to be perfectly honest, I had a blast. Sure, it wasn't politically correct, but I can't tell you how satisfying it was to blow a big hole in a particularly noisy one at 5:03am one Saturday morning. The hollowpoints made almost no entry wound - but not much was left of the backside of the 'pecker. :biggrin:
...That's when I found the falloucy of my thought process. The bird I shot (a whopping 12.3 pounds, even without the missing parts) was a female. Now that she was missing, the male, who had been the one who had brought her to my backyard, went out to seek another female. He came back with two.
...So I shot them. He came back with three.
Finally, one day I was sighting up my scope again when I saw a flutter on a tree. I focused in, and guess what I saw? Red tuft. Yep... The male. *Blam!* Not much was left of him, either. I can't begin to tell you how satisfying that was. The loudmouthed little jerk with the Napoleon complex (he was about half the size of the females) and all the girlfriends hit the ground next to the tree with a gratifying "thud." My cat nabbed the body and disappeared. I shouldered my pellet gun like a victorious soldier. (Silly, hunh?)
It took the surrounding males (apparently, woodpeckers have territories marked off in their little bird-minds like city blocks) about two weeks for them to figure out that Woody had left his "territory" unattended. So guess what happened? Yep... Woodpecker shouting matches and territorial pecker wars in my backyard. At 5am. On Saturday morning.
I thought I was going to die from lack of sleep.
One day I just got mad and went down to my local hardware store and bought a bigass rat trap... You know, the old fashioned kind with the big wooden base. I also bought some suet while I was there, and a nail to nail it all up on a tree in my backyard. I smeared suet onto the rat trap, cocked it, and left it.
From that point on, I got sleep. No more pecker fights. No more screaming children at 5am. No more stalking at 4:59am, feeling like a wacko with a pellet gun. No more missed days of work, and no more machine gun fire.
All I had to do was empty the trap every afternoon or so. My cat used to love it. :biggrin:
...And that's what I'd recommend. For less than $5, there is a solution - and it is effective immediately.
...Just don't tell Arizona Wildlife that I singlehandedly put a significant dent in the 'pecker population in Southern Arizona. :biggrin:
