'Chimney caps, vent pipes, gutters': Why some woodpeckers are major metal heads

[sl8]

https://www.npr.org/2024/05/31/g-s1-1606/woodpeckers-bang-metal-homes-loud-urban-noise-mating
(4 min. audio at link)

'Chimney caps, vent pipes, gutters': Why some woodpeckers are major metal heads


MAY 31, 2024 7:00 AM ET
Sacha Pfeiffer



Yellow-shafted Flicker, Northern Flicker, Colaptes auratus.
Woodpeckers are known for banging on wood, but some individuals living in urban environments also bang on metal.
Education Images/Universal Images Group via Getty Images

[...]

I've seen and heard plenty of woodpeckers hammer on trees. But never on metal. So to find out why the bird was doing this, I called an expert: Kevin McGowan, an ornithologist at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology who recently created a course called "The Wonderful World of Woodpeckers."

McGowan said woodpeckers batter wood to find food, make a home, mark territory and attract a mate. But when they bash away at metal, "what the birds are trying to do is make as big a noise as possible," he said, "and a number of these guys have found that — you know what? If you hammer on metal, it's really loud!"

Woodpeckers primarily do this during the springtime breeding season, and their metallic racket has two purposes, "basically summarized as: All other guys stay away, all the girls come to me," McGowan said. "And the bigger the noise, the better."

Over time, some urban woodpeckers have learned that metal is more resonant and reverberant than wood, and amplifies sound much more than trees do, he added.

[...]

[SarahD]

1. Took ours a week to figure it out.

I lived in a circle of a dozen government houses. They replaced all the gutters and downspouts. Within a week, every sunrise brought the most enormous racket you could imagine.

[Farmer-Rick]

2. When I first got my metal roof installed

Several woodpeckers would wake me up in the morning. They were pecking right above my head. Though there's an attic to muffle the sound, it was still very loud.

They eventually moved on to less noisy pecking.

[lark]

3. There are a lot of woodpeckers in our old growth forest neighborhood.

We see and hear them all the time. It's especially nice when they are in one of the trees in our yard. Anyway, when we walk we often hear woodpeckers hitting on the metal at the top of power poles, especially in this one area. Now we know what's going on! Thanks for posting this informative and cool article.

[sybylla]

4. We had one that spent one summer tapping on our old tractor.

5am. Every day. Ting, ting-ting-ting, ting-ting.

Until we squeezed it into the shed.

[AllaN01Bear]

6. musta been very annoying .

[sybylla]

7. Very. We have an old farm house w/o. central air.

We sleep with the windows open on all but the hottest days.

[AllaN01Bear]

5. im too sexy for my shirt!!!