I was sorting through some of my digital photos and found this shot of a Downy Woodpecker drilling on one of my wren/chickadee houses. In late summer there were several days when I heard thumping outside my window, but I couldn’t figure out what was making the sound. Around the same time my mom mentioned to me that the wren houses that my husband built for her were being attacked by a woodpecker.
The next time I heard the sound, I went outside to investigate and sure enough, there was a woodpecker on one of my wren houses too. Over the next few weeks woodpeckers tried retrofitting three of my four houses. My husband also made wren houses for his parents and soon they reported the same problem.
It was too late in the season for the birds to be nesting, and it was too early for them to be preparing for winter, so I’m not sure what they were doing (although with all the snow we’re getting, maybe they knew something we didn’t know).
During the breeding season woodpeckers announce their territory by drumming. Perhaps these birds were just practicing. The empty bird houses certainly offered great reverberation.
I finally put an end to the drilling by slitting Dixie cups and putting little funnels into the birdhouse openings. My husband plans to make new birdhouses for everyone, but in the mean time we need to devise something clever to prevent the little devils from carving bigger openings.
