Woody Woodpecker is a lovable, impish cartoon character who’s always getting into trouble. But Sue Nugent finds nothing charming about the real woodpeckers steadily pecking holes in the cedar siding of her Park Ridge home.
Nugent and her husband, Rich, have lived in their handsome home on Ashland Avenue for 13 years, but it’s just the last couple of years that woodpeckers have been a problem.
“We`ve had other animal problems, like squirrels and raccoons, but this woodpecker thing is something else,” she said.
It’s not an unusual problem, said Brian P. Emanuel, the city’s environmental health officer.
“We get complaints about woodpeckers every year, in the spring during the bird’s mating season, and in the fall when they’re migrating for the winter,” Emanuel said. “They’ll go through and attack certain trees.”
So far this fall he’s received fewer than a half-dozen calls.
Most complain about the drill-like drumming noise the birds make to mark their territory and attract a mate. Others are concerned about the holes the birds make, which can amount to serious damage.
One dramatic example of that made news in 1995, when a NASA space shuttle flight was delayed after woodpeckers drummed holes into an external fuel tank, costing the space agency hundreds of thousands of dollars to repair.
All that local officials can do to help residents cope with these pesky birds is offer advice on how to scare the pests away. They can’t kill the birds because they are a protected species under the Federal Migratory Bird Act.
Most people don’t want to kill them anyway, Emanuel said, they just want to make them go away.
The Nugents’ home sits on a block of stately houses that are surrounded by ample lawns and tall, sturdy trees. What Nugent doesn’t understand is why her house seems to be a favorite target.
“I really haven’t heard any other neighbors complaining about this,” she said.
“We’ve tried everything we’ve been told–hanging aluminum pie plates on a piece of twine from the side of the house. The bird was supposed to be frightened by its reflection,” Nugent said.
“But that bird wasn’t scared off. It was just more noise. The pie plate would bang against the house in the wind. It also wasn’t afraid of the Mylar scare balloon we bought. We’ve even thrown tennis balls at it. It keeps coming back.”
Actually, that’s not unusual either, says Fabio Fabi, a master gardener at the University of Illinois Cooperative Extension Service in Tinley Park. “These birds migrate and seem to stop at the same place every year,” he said.
Scientists say the birds often attack cedar siding in the fall in an attempt to set up winter homes.
“Male woodpeckers establish overwintering territories in the fall by drumming on dead tree limbs,” according to a cooperative extension report.
The report says that flickers, which are blue jay-size woodpeckers, produce small holes over large areas while downy woodpeckers, which are smaller in size, tend to make larger holes big enough for the bird to enter and make a nest.
If all this information is enlightening, it is of little comfort to Nugent.
“We’d like to get our house repaired but I don’t want to make any kind of investment until we know the bird, or birds, is gone,” she said, adding she’s not sure whether they have several woodpeckers or just one with a bad attitude.
“One thing I did learn is that this type of damage is not covered by our homeowner’s policy,” she said. “It doesn’t cover vermin and that’s what the birds are considered.”
