For Release April 4, 2000

AGRI-VIEWS
by Chuck Otte, Geary County Extension Agent

Now that spring has sprung, we seem to be suffering from the problems of avian raging hormones. Numerous phone calls last week seemed to center around two basic problems: the gutter drummers and the window bangers. The good news is that these activities shouldn’t last more than a couple weeks, in most cases. The bad news is, there isn’t much we can do to stop it!

The gutter drummers are woodpeckers. Any woodpecker species will drum, but most of the time the culprit is a Red-bellied Woodpecker, a Northern Flicker or a Downy Woodpecker. Drumming is a territorial display by the males. They want to find the most resonant object they can to announce that this is their territory so that rival males will stay away.

In the "wild" they will find a standing hollow dead limb and hammer away. In towns, they have found that metal stove pipes and metal gutters provide a very good sounding board. This fast tapping is not designed to excavate wood. It is simply to make sound. When woodpeckers are excavating for food or a nest cavity, the pecking is a much slower and deliberate action.

If you hear a woodpecker drumming on your house you can go out and frighten it away. Firearms should not be needed or used! Simply walking out of your house will usually scare them away. If you keep doing this, they will eventually give up. If they are persistent, you can always find some reflective mylar ribbon and attach 18 inch lengths in the area where they have been drumming. This lightweight ribbon will readily move in the breeze and is often enough to move them on to somebody else’s gutter. Drumming activity occurs over a fairly short time frame. Before long both the drummer and his mate will have young woodpeckers to care for.

The window bangers can be a bigger problem. Robins and Cardinals seem to be the most common culprits, but any species that nests around homes can be caught in the act. Nesting birds establish territories. These territories are important as they dictate where the food gathering will occur and to some extent it also has to do with protection of the nest, eggs or young themselves.

When a bird hovers in front of a window and keeps banging into it, it is simply trying to drive off the other bird that it is seeing. The other bird is nothing more than its own reflection, but the bird doesn’t know that. I’ve seen birds attack rear view mirrors on parked vehicles. Once they see their reflection in anything, they will become obsessive compulsive. They keep going back and looking and every time that other bird is still there! Since some of these species may have multiple broods during the spring and summer, they may keep aggressively attacking the window well into July. The closer the nest is to the window, the more aggressive the bird will be.

To stop this behavior a method has to be created to prevent the bird from seeing its reflection in the window. Wooden shutters are one approach, but this is a little drastic and impractical in most cases. Sometimes you can place a dark cardboard cut out of a hawk or falcon in the window and that may distract them. You may also need to try the mylar ribbon I previously mentioned or you can place a helium filled mylar balloon just inside or outside the window. And sometimes nothing will work. But not to worry, the nesting season should be over with by early August!

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