<p>We have had a woodpecker (it seems to be just one…not sure if they return to the same place each year) come to our house each year and peck away for hours. We have filled in the spots, only to find them pecked away again.</p>
<p>Does anyone have any experience with this and any suggestions for getting rid of him or discouraging him from coming to our house…an exterminator suggested that we may have ants and we should fumigate the entire house! I am not a fan of putting chemicals into the walls of our home.</p>
<p>We have has some success tacking mylar strips on the house in the area where the woodpecker pecks. The shine and the fluttering seems to keep them away. Not the most attractive option but we got tired or replacing shingles. If you google woodpecker deterrent or something similar you should come up with some options.</p>
<p>Woodpeckers follow a set route looking for food and mark their territory by drumming on a reverberating surface (the pileated woodpecker on our route gets our metal chimney cap). You can hang bird netting over the part that he has attacking. If he is finding food, it’s a much worse issue.</p>
<p>When I couldn’t reach the area where a woodpecker was hammering away, I bought a helium filled mylar balloon and asked the party store to cut the ribbon extra long. Then I was able to tie the ribbon to the crank on a casement window and let the balloon out until it was the same height as the top of the downspout where the woodpecker chose to peck. The balloon only lasted a few days but it was long enough to encourage the woodpecker to find new territory. </p>
<p>I’d be worried about what the woodpeckers are attracted by - they are probably finding insects in your wood. I’d get checked out by an exterminator before just resorting to trying to scare the bird away.</p>
<p>I had this for years! I would patch the hole and they would make new ones. Plus, since woodpeckers are a protected species you can’t shoot them (even with a pellet gun to scare them). I finally gave in and put siding over everything but the front. For some reason they only attacked the softer cedar shakes on the sides and back, and not the hard cedar planks on the front. I left those and they left them alone :)</p>
<p>I am with others, from what I know of woodpeckers, they tend to peck away at places that have insects, it isn’t them doing it to simply make noise or whatnot. I would be a bit dubious about calling in an exterminator, because they can very easily say “oh, you have a woodpecker, you have bugs in the wood, you need to pay me X to get rid of them”…if you think it could be insects, I would recommend getting a home inspector who doesn’t offer services, they have no reason to lie (among other things, exterminators as a business are kind of like AAMCO transmission service, they often find problems where they don’t exist). If it doesn’t look like insects, then some of the other suggestions might work…</p>
<p>You also might want to contact the audobon society, they often have great ideas, too. </p>
<p>You aren’t going to like reading this, but the exterminator is probably correct, at least about the roots of your woodpecker problem. You may have sections of siding that need to be replaced. Whether moisture damage, the woodpecker or the ants/insects came first, they do tend to go hand in hand. </p>
<p>Have some exterior painting/stain/wood siding maintainance contractors take a look at your siding, particularly where the woodpeckers have been pounding. You probably have bad wood that need to be replaced. If you have carpenter ants the back side of the wood will clearly show it.</p>
<p>Woodpeckers were a problem for a couple years on a particular area of our house. Once we addressed (replaced) a large area of bad wood, the woodpeckers never returned. (Fingers crossed). We did not have carpenter ants, but we did have harmless sugar ants that showed up inside regularly. The ants were attracted to the wet damaged wood siding. </p>
<p>We are much more proactive about maintainance and replacing bad wood now. We also have a contract to have the exterior treated for ants quarterly. Nothing sprayed inside, just the entire foundation sprayed four times a year. No ants, no bugs, no woodpeckers in years.</p>
<p>Our neighbors recently threw in the towel and covered their cedar siding with vinyl siding.</p>
<p>Edited to add: do not rely only on extermination to solve this problem. You need to replace/repair any damaged wood first, or the bugs will continue to be attracted to the wet damaged wood. </p>
<p>The exterminator came and said we do not have an ant problem…and the wood looks good. He still suggested using pesticide as he said he had one other case of a woodpecker where he used pec=sticide even though there was no ant problem and said “the woodpecker won’t like the taste and won’t come back.” </p>
<p>I had very good luck (at a previous house) with going out and scaring the woodpeckers by throwing sticks at them. I did it repeatedly for a few days–and they never came back.</p>
<p>There is very little wood on our house, but the peckers come and drum their mating marches on the metal gutters and the Hardiplank siding anyway. Mr B scared the most annoying one that did it at 5 am by pounding on the wall with his fist (whacking the wall with a pillow works great, too). The amorous woodpecker never returned. :)</p>
<p>We have vinyl siding and there is a wood pecker that comes every year. So I’m not sure that OP has an ant problem. I just get out the garden house and spray water at the house… </p>
<p>All I can say is we have woodpeckers out in our woods, and they are loud. However, just reading the title of the thread I thought…you’ve got some kind of bugs on your siding they’re going after, woodpeckers don’t just peck for fun. The problem isn’t the woodpecker, it’s what is tempting them either in or under your shingles. </p>
<p>This is a good article about the difference between territorial-mating drumming and tapping when looking for insects. It also lists methods of dealing with the problem.</p>