Talk about a loud bird when they are trying to attract a mate. I have one that sets up camp at 5:30 every morning on my stove pipe cap and makes a huge racket. It sounds like a machine gun and wakes my 2 year old up every morning. I must look like a crazy old man running outside with my bathrobe, cursing, throwing small stones at my stove pipe to get the little sucker to fly away. I have resorted to keeping a small cup of landscape stones in the house so I have them handy when "woody" shows up. I swear to god this damn bird is taunting me now. :jester:

Talk about a loud bird when they are trying to attract a mate. I have one that sets up camp at 5:30 every morning on my stove pipe cap and makes a huge racket. It sounds like a machine gun and wakes my 2 year old up every morning. I must look like a crazy old man running outside with my bathrobe, cursing, throwing small stones at my stove pipe to get the little sucker to fly away. I have resorted to keeping a small cup of landscape stones in the house so I have them handy when "woody" shows up. I swear to god this damn bird is taunting me now. :jester: -------------------------------------------------------------------------
because i mean to attract them and the more the better...

--->
the reason he's using your stove pipe is because maybe in your neighborhood all the "sounding tree's" have been cut down or have fallen down... which is the effect of civilization invading their territory. They are our termite eaters and must be protected!
the yellow shafted flickers do some carpenter ants and lawn grubs.
anyways... the-
SOLUTION............
theres two approaches...0ne:you go to stop and shop or several different grocery stores ok ,and talk to the butcher if you don't see it
and ask for beef suet... which is relatively cheap stuff. Then you either hang some green wire mesh squares (@ walmart) that are like a six inch wide cube....where they will see it...(especially in the friggan rain)
or two:\
take an old oak log section with short stubby branches
(for perches)
and drill some 2 inch holes in it from top to bottom to
cram full of suet and hang it where they'll see it.

with that acomplished:

they will be so busy taking little chunks and stuffing them in choice personal wood pecker holes on their favorite tree ...
(cant do that to a stove pipe)
that they will switch drumming spots to protect their new stash of (squirrelled away) beef suet chunks...and attract their new mate to that NEW tree instead of your stove pipe.

then everyone will get their beauty sleep again. :uhuh:

Great Stuff Raven. This woodpecker lives in a huge 100 year old oak tree across the street. It has several holes in the tree that it frequents. I just uses my stove pipe in the am to get its groove on and let others know he is king of that neighborhood. Very interesting bird to watch just wakes up the kids.

Come down to Hobe Sound in the Spring.
The damn things use the metal telephone poles, you can hear them from several hundred feet away!!!

I have tried everything up here to discourage them not to use my stove cap as a sounding board. Fortunately it only lasts for several weeks in the spring, once it finds a 'mate' it settles down. There is nothing I have found to do to discourage them.

If you were looking for some what would you do?

Pellet gun

i had one doing the same thing is why i know....

every friggan morning @ 5:30 am ratta tatta TAT on the friggan gutter
outside the bedroom window....wakin us up..

this i did for my hardworkin wife...
and i do everything imaginable to allow her to sleep in
because she works like 65 hours a week....:sleeps:

i even have to box up the parrot (huge tv box)
(so he thinks its still nightime)
til she finally gets up

or else ....he starts "his bitchin and moaning..."
ruining her sleep too...
afterwards he gets let outside to fly wild and free.

i'm always up @ first light....see.

anyways....
back to wood friggan peckheads...:hihi:
....
but once i kept the suet -log loaded and or filled
end of problem.
costs like....4 -5 bucks every 2 weeks.
as seen here:
http://i25.photobucket.com/albums/c66/ravenob1/suet-log.jpg

to go running around in (real smooth bark)

and he has a blast so when he comes in
he's as tired as a "well run dog"...
and starving... heh heh

heres the little bass turd...
http://i25.photobucket.com/albums/c66/ravenob1/SINBAD.jpg

I didn't rear Ravens whole post but I did see the suet part. Woodpeckers love it. Very rarely ever get on birdfeeder and eat seed. They perch in poplar and shagbark hickory trees and make a racket with thier beaks, and then fly to 4 x 4 above the suet feeder and back themselves down the 4 x 4 to suets level and eat away. Its cheap at agway and if you cut a empty plastic gallon milk container to about a third of its width and screw it in, so that it covers the suet feeder the covering will keep the pests from gorging themselves on the suet. Also place feeder above squirrell baffle.

Get a soft shot pellet gun for about 65 bucks, they don;t kill, but man are they inpressive, I bought my daughter a fully automatic one for chrismas form sport authority and these things ROCK! they sting a little and have great range, and you can unlod the thing on him hahaha. It won;t kill him just make him aware that his presence it not wanted:D

Sounds crazy but it worked. My neighbor had the same problem with his redwood siding house. He strung couple a piecces of mono line from the area he was pecking at out to a tree. It worked. I don't know why, but i think he must have been bumping into the lines all the time and got tired of it. :huh: Worth a try. Got any fishing line? :laughs:

Woodpeckers can do damage big time. I have a camp in Rangely Maine and the Pileated Woodpecker fell in love with the trim around the windows and doors. They damn near tore the entire trim from all the windows, including the sills They are huge birds and stand as high as a big crow.:spidey:

Striperhound...... fire up your wood stove :hee:

The title made me think of booger. :rotf2:

I was in the yard one day and heard one, sounded kinda close, the I seen the little bastich hanging on the side of my new shed tapping away. So i threw a handful of gravel at him and he flew away. Next day I see a nice clean 2" hole clear through the wall.:realmad:
I got some extra vinyl siding, maybe I'll side my shed.

I never say no to a little wood in my pecker!

I was waiting for someone to hijack this thread with a woodpecker joke. Striperhounds second sentence was almost to much to pass on ("I have one that sets up camp at 5:30 every morning")

nothing that a shotgun or a high powerd bb gun wont cure,roast wood pecker sounds good tonight

I've heard them tapping on other people's fireplace chimney inserts, but I have a brick fireplace so I can't imagine what it sounds like inside. I find the woodpeckers cool to look at and to watch. I back up to woods and they'll come to a birdfeeder with seed in it, and they peck at it for a while then hop up the side of a tree, I guess to swallow. Or I can tell when they're going back to feed the kiddies because they peck at the seed more vigorously and fly off back to the nest. I have half a dozen poles in my garden for beans and I came home to find almost all the bark off them. I figured out they were loaded with grubs or something and the woodpeckers did me the favor of getting rid of them. It's also cool to watch the force with which they whack their beaks into a tree. How do you not get a concussion?
I also have those nasty blue jays, but yesterday might made right. I heard a terrible commotion in the trees and then all of a sudden a huge crow or raven comes flying out with two blue jays in hot pursuit dive bombing him. They were forcing him down and he's heading straight for me. He veered off at the last second and I could see he had two eggs in his mouth. I'm sure the blue jays gave up after a while and went and went back took it out on the robins.

crows and or Ravens

they steal babies and eggs for food for
their babies if and when food is scarce
and with all this rain allot of
the smaller animals are staying dry in their
burrows and can't even be found.

crows are known for hunting in packs
like wolves with similar tactics but not during
nesting time...or brood time...