Woodpecker Pandemic

[tom jr.]

I have a serious woodpecker problem in the sugar bush and was wondering what I could do to ward off mother natures wood jack hammers! they are tearing up the sugar maples pretty bad leaving holes 3 inches wide by that much deep anyware from the trunk to the tops. their are a couple dead shags that need to be cut but I dont want to cut the whole woods down, Any suggestions? someone please help!!

[maplwrks]

Typically, Woodpeckers Only Hammer On Sick Or Diseased Trees.

[tom jr.]

typicaly your write, but these are young healthy trees. the woods was select cut three years ago,90% of the garbadge is gone!!!

[Toblerone]

Hey... maybe since all the sick/rotting/diseased trees are gone, there is nothing left for them to peck!

Sorry to hear they are damaging your trees, but they sure are pretty to look at. My mom had 23 acres in WV that was inhabited by a giant foot to foot and half tall woodpecker. It was really cool to watch. City folk like me don't get to see that often.

Good luck,
Dave

[maplecrest]

so far they are pecking the trees. wait till they find your main line for mate calling later this spring. i fixed 327 holes in my main lines from them hammer heads. being an endangered bird you cant blast them. here in vt any way. [but things can happen] moth balls around your woods will drive them away.

[peacemaker]

or the metal roof on the porch outside your bedroom window at sunrise when u been boiling till 3 am and just fell alseep

[peacemaker]

maybe try some owl decoys or cut out some cardboard cutouts of yourself and place them all around ...
lol

[TapME]

I have the same problem with the woodpeckers and there are plenty of dead trees left. I think that they are after food or water or sweet water. so far not a bad problem with the trees. They are still healthy I just don't tap them.

[Brent]

Make some giant humming bird feeders and fill them with sugar water. If there's no bugs in the maples, then they gotta be after the sweet.

[mountainvan]

Peacemaker got it right, owl decoy. Get the kind that moves in the wind.

[Mac_Muz]

I am pretty sure they are running a trap line. I have watched these birds do this over many years, 3 of which I lived in a tee pee and had no choice but to watch and since I had no tv, watching them and other wildlife beat the heck out of watching nothing.

I noticed over time this action, and saw the tree sap run. The woodpeckers didn't appear interested in the sap, but the spring bugs were.

I am serious, they are setting up a trap line.

[hholt]

I was emptying sap tonight with my oldest boy and we had two male pileated woodpeckers quarreling right over us. They are the big ones with a crest, and are very teritorial. We manage for them and redheads by selectively killing trees, mostly hackberries, and leaving them stand as snags.

[Brent]

So you think the peckers were smart enough to know if they made the tree bleed sweet sap the bugs would come to get the sap?

Drive thru insect service.

[Mac_Muz]

Brent yup I do. I also watched black carpenter ants go right up the trees, and get into sticky sap, and come right back down in long lines, just like a conveyor belt. This happens after we are done with the tapping, and the sap has become more like syrup.

The woodpeckers do it again in Fall too, as there is a Fall run, we just don't tap. I KNOW there is a Fall run, and have seen, and tasted the evidence many times deer hunting.

All you must do is find a fresh deer rub on a sugar maple, and taste the golden droplets adhearing to the wounded tree to tell.

These same birds do this on other trees like spruce, less sugar, but still there is some, and these holes weep spruce gum. Once you could buy this in a little match box in stores. It hadn't been processed at all in many cases, and might still contain bark. Of the little that was processed it was a pink color, and clean.

Now tell me ants don't like sugar?

I can show anyone willing to come, where woodpeckers have made even rings right around paper birch, maybe 16" apart. One ring right around the tree, and then 16" up, another ring, and then more, all fully around the tree. But smaller holes from smaller birds.

I see other birds not woodpeckers, but in the nuthatch family feeding on these as well as downey and hairy's woodpeckers. I am not sure if the nut hatches can create the holes or not.

Today i noticed the working of a piliated woodpecker here, on the road into this place, and last summer one was pecking a tin roof.

That was my first time for that effect, and I thought someone was drilling a well far off in some distance, untill one day the noise just bugged me, and I went to find it. I didn't go far. As I listened and walked the sounds suddenly came from behind me, which I thought was odd, as i had been walking towards the racket, and took it as miles off.

I didn't really expect to discover the source, but planned to map a line instead, and then find the source.

That bird was beatin' his brains out on a pine shed roof, once used for horses here.

Now i can't understand that, unless the metal makes a better mating call..

perhaps one of you younger bucks can go test that out and let us old geezers know. That we can get get some nice young chicks as they can't tell from a distance if we are old untill they see us!

If ants are smart enought to climb trees for sugar, woodpeckers are smart enough to trap for ants.

[Brent]

Mac

I've seen the ants go after any part of a wounded tree, especially pines.

Gotta love what you learn on this forum. Woodpeckers setting trap lines *&^%$$

[Mac_Muz]

I am not so sure I have observed any kind of tree, but I believe it, since ants will chew up house with kiln dry wood const. I just wonder what the ants are doing in 'all?' trees, as they make home of many trees eatting, ot at least chewing up wood to carve out homes.

Are they eatting wood to live as food or eatting wood to remove what doesn't look like a house to an ant? With the sap I am pretty sure they are gathering food.

When splitting oaks I find ant nests in the heart wood which is usually rotten. I can't say if these nests are a source of nutrtion or not, but I have my doubts it is, as oak contains tannin, and tannin is a way to oak tan, vegetable tan leather, so I would think that any ant really eatting oak would tan itself from the inside out.

The same goes for a Tree called Hemlock. I know this tree's bark was harvested in cords. I even know of a pile 4' x 4' x 8' long abandoned in the woods. Of course it isn't these exact dimentions anymore as the top is covered in moss, and the sides have rotted a bit, also this pile settled in the 50+ years it layed there, but still you can tell what it is.

It helps to know the shutter mill now was the tannery back then too.

I have tapped Birch before on a whim, and while I can see some folks would like it pretty well I don't, and so I don't tap it anymore. It has a mint taste that I don't care for. I do use the inner bark to make a passable coffee from which has that same mint taste which to me is more agreeable.

I don't like beets, and pickels either, both that contain sugars, so this is saying it is just me and my particular tases.

Ants might be like that, and so prefer certain sugars too, and might pass on others. I might be a lot of things, some maybe not so great, but I have yet to become an ant.

No birds i am aware of seem to like sugars.. maybe they do, and I just don't know, but I tend to not think so. I don't include foreign birds not found in New England. The only exeception I know of is the humming bird. So far as I know humming birds don't peck holes in trees.
I don't know if they eat bugs either.

[3GoatHill]

If they're attacking healthy trees, it's a yellow bellied sapsucker. Unlike other woodpeckers, they are after the sap, not bugs. They have been known to completely girdle trees, thus killing them.

[killingworthmaple]

Hey if you could only find a way to train them to make there holes 4 ft off the ground with a 5/16 size you would be all set. That could be the latest breakthough in sugaring.

Nathan

[sjdoyon]

8170
8171

We have a angry woodpecker on our property.

[Brian Ryther]

If they're attacking healthy trees, it's a yellow bellied sapsucker. Unlike other woodpeckers, they are after the sap, not bugs. They have been known to completely girdle trees, thus killing them.
"sapsucker" is a bad name. They make the holes to allow the sap to run to attract the bugs. Then they eat the bugs.

[Sunday Rock Maple]

We have a pililated that often will come to with 100 yards when we are working on tubing and once in a while much closer. I am convinced that he hears us and flies in to check us out. We really enjoy seeing him as he seems to brighten up even the greyest winter day.

[Shawn]

New Hampshire 410 works good

[DrTimPerkins]

New Hampshire 410 works good

The Federal Migratory Bird Treaty Act protects woodpeckers, although you can apply for a permit or have a pest control person take care of them if they are damaging property.

[3GoatHill]

This has some good info on it. It has a recording of it's voice too:

http://www.allaboutbirds.org/guide/Yellow-Bellied_Sapsucker/id