Idiot birds pecking my house at dawn

General Questions
#1

The last two mornings at dawn (of course the little *&#$s chose the weekend to do this), some bird has landed on the eave of my house right outside my bedroom window and started pecking. Hard. And Loud. I smacked the window and it squeaked and flew away but 15 minutes later (just as I was finally back asleep), it came back and resumed the pecking. Same thing another 15 minutes later. Aaaarg. Finally around 7:30 it left for good.

I noticed upon inspecting the eave that there is a pencil-width sized hole in the eave. I also saw a carpenter bee checking out the hole from the underside of the eave. I don’t know if the bird caused the hole or found an existing hole (maybe made by the bee) and started pecking it.

What kind of bird is doing this and how can I get rid of it?

#2

The bird, obviously, is your freind. He’s trying to establish a symbiotic relationship with you, in which he get’s a snack and you’re bee-free, and you chase him off.
That’s my take on it.
Peace,
mangeorge

#3

When I lived in the mods in college (modular living units–think trailer, basically), every spring crows would land on the roof and pound open the pecans that fell from the tree outside our place. It was annoying as hell and sounded like someone knocking on the door or even hammering on the roof.

It’s quite possible the sound you’re hearing is a bird trying to open some variety of bird chow, regularly pounding away to get some grub–not irritate you. Much. :slight_smile:

#4

It probably was some sort of woodpecker who espied some insects on your home. Treat it kindly. This is National Bird Week. Be sure to keep your cat at home this week.:slight_smile:

#5

The stupid thing was back again this morning at 5:56 am. I yanked on the miniblind hoping to scare it, ended up breaking the miniblind, but at least the bird left. 15 minutes later, back again. This time I tapped the window with a stick. Didn’t scare it, tapped harder, ended up breaking the window. Cursing, I dragged myself out of bed, grabbed duct tape and a ladder and went outside. Covered all the holes (there were several) w/duct tape, then went back in and got some clear enamel spray and sprayed that all over the wood and duct tape, hoping it would make the area smell noxious. The stupid &^#$$# thing came back, ripped right through the duct tape and also simply moved a few inches over and pecked out even more holes. I could actually see the wood chips falling past my window.

Could someone please tell me how to get rid of this stupid bird? I am getting punchy from lack of sleep and plus my house is being destroyed.

Oh and for the person who said put my cat in for a week? The hell I will. Why should Dunkie be confined to house arrest for a whole week because of bunch of damn birds?

#6

Here is a site with information about dealing with nuisance woodpeckers: http://www.ext.colostate.edu/pubs/natres/06516.pdf

#7

Yep, it’s a woodpecker. (Newsflash!)

It’s either using your house as a drum to advertise its territory and/or availability to mate, or…

It’s finding and eating termites, carpenter bees or wood-eating ants in your soffit. In which case you’ve got bigger problems than birds waking you up, and you should thank him for pointing that out to you.

#8

It’s finding food! It will keep on coming back until the tasty morsels are gone. Go down to your local hardware store and get some bug killer, the reason I say Hardware store is the stuff they would have is a little more hard core than you can get anywhere else. While at the store pick up some expanding foam insulation.

Spray the heck out of the area being attacked, in the hole, under the siding, and ten feet all around. Do this until your wrist is sore from spraying, then take a break and do it again. Then, shove the nozzle of the foam insulation as far into the hole as you can get. (did you spray the heck out of the hole? good.) then fill 'er up. The foam insulation will fill in all the open spaces the bugs have made. Once it’s hardened (alot will ooze out of the hole) you can trim the excess off with a razor, and make a sad attempt at color matching with a little paint.

Take a walk around your house and look for further signs of infestation, the bugs themselves or maybe sawdust on the ground. Spray the heck out of that as well. Repeat for those areas, and repeat next spring.

A woodpecker put around ten golfball-sized holes into my house before I went to war. He hasn’t been back since.

#9

when i lived in kentucky we had the SAME problem and on top of that problem we had birds flying into our windows almost everyday. So, to fix the window problem we cut out a black figure of a hawk and owl and put it on the window. Then for the woodpecker on the house, I think we got an owl statue and a hawk statue, this kept the birds a good distance away from them.

I’d suggest you go down to your local hunting store and get a plastic statue of the woodpeckers predator, most stores have a return policy so if it doesn’t work just take it back. :stuck_out_tongue: or you could just get it over with quick… 12-gauge automatic shotgun! (just dont shoot your house!!!)

(i can’t particularly remember which predators we had to scare the birds away with, but I thought I remembered a hawk and an owl but it’s been a long time.)