Calgary woodpeckers lovely, but becoming pests

Damage in the thousands of dollars

It seems some woodpeckers in the western city of Calgary Alberta have developed a bad habit.

A retirement community on the outskirts of the city is being targetted by woodpeckers who are drilling into the stucco covering of the houses and causing a great deal of damage.

“Flicker woodpeckers, they come here every year and drill their holes and they cause a lot of damage. It’s frustrating, very frustrating,” said Harley Sanders, who is on the board of a seniors community on the outskirts of Calgary.

Now you might think the birds are crazy drilling into stucco where there are no bugs, but there is method in their madness.

The hard stucco covers Styrofoam substrate and the hammering creates a loud noise designed to attract mates.  In addition, pecking through the Styrofoam to create a nest is a lot easier than pecking through a hard tree, plus there are few predators in a residential setting.  For the woodpecker it seems like a win win win situation.

For homeowners it’s a noisy expensive headache, and there’s not much they can do. A stucco company in the neighbouring province of British Columbia says in the past they would get only a few calls a month for repairs in Calgary but now that’s gone up to the rate of one to three calls a day.

Residents have also tried several things to scare them away including hanging shiny CDs from the eaves, to kites, and plastic crows or owls all to little avail.

The woodpeckers are a protected species so it is not allowed to harm them.

On a forum where residents are posting questions on how to deal with them, one wag suggested that plastic owls don’t frighten the woodpeckers but that using a cat would.

However as a cat can’t climb the stucco to get at the bird, the wag suggested using a cat-a-pult, but adding that because the felines can be high strung, and to avoid a cat-a-strophe, the homeowner might need to first give the cat a tonic to calm it down and finally adding that once the woodpecker has been hit with a cat or two, it will likely move on.

Real experts have suggested homeowners put a nesting box near where the holes are being made, but say otherwise there is little that can be done,adding that the birds are lovely to look at, but for homeowners they’re becoming a nuisance.

with files from CBC