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In California, a pest control company recently dealt with an outrageous matter. Someone called for help and said that there seemed to be more and more bugs near their house, and the sound of woodpeckers digging holes could always be heard. Residents with question marks have to call in professional handlers to see what's going on in their houses.

? The house seems to have been stolen, but I don't know who did it. Giphy in the local area, woodpeckers and residents often fight for wits, and the surface of the houses they live in become the targets of woodpeckers. In the spring, woodpeckers make rhythmic pecking sounds on wood, water pipes, aluminum panels and vents to declare their territory and find a mate.

In April and May, breeding season woodpeckers start digging holes in your wall to build their own nests. If your wallboard has insects and pupae, they will also use your home as a good choice for foraging.

Find a hole, happy woodpecker. | Wiki but apart from that, the most common behavior of non-insect acorn woodpeckers in human housing is actually to store their own "property"-acorns. Some rich acorn woodpeckers even peck out hundreds of holes, each embedded with acorns. Food stored in trees is less likely to be stolen by squirrels and other animals, which is equivalent to their own "private bank".

Woodpeckers must not be Cornell Lab of Ornithology / youtube sometimes acorn woodpeckers have shared banks where a flock of birds keep acorns on the same tree (or telephone pole) and communicate today's harvest with the voice of waka-waka. Whether you can find someone in spring depends on the supply of food that can last through the winter. The baby woodpecker, which will be born next year, will soon join the work of building a "granary" to maintain the family's food reserves.

Cornell Lab of Ornithology / youtube according to the experience of the pest control staff, the difference in the room this time is probably because the woodpecker is storing food. So he made a hole in the wall on the second floor of the room and tried to take out the acorn and repair the wall damaged by the bird.

However, the sight after the opening stunned everyone: a steady stream of acorns poured out like a flood and poured out of the hole. People tried to clean up the acorns outside the hole, but found that they could not control them at all. The acorns not only covered the ground, but also piled up into a hill.

???

??? Finally, with a total of more than 600 jin of acorns, people packed eight large garbage bags before finally cleaning them up.

? However, what is more difficult than cleaning acorns is repairing the room. In the process of storing acorns, the wall was severely damaged, not only with holes in the walls and chimneys, but also covered with destroyed structures and rat shit.

In a subsequent investigation, the handlers speculated that the house was scarred. The woodpecker thought it would be good to dig a hole to hide the acorns, but the hollow wall let all the stored acorns fall in. People think that it is impossible to save so many acorns without working hard for three or five years. The millionaire in the woodpecker world has worked so hard to save food for so long that it has been cleaned up by human beings. It's hard to say whether a man's home or a woodpecker's house was stolen.

? In the end, the resident had to make comprehensive repairs to the house and replace it with new vinyl panels to prevent the woodpecker from burrowing again. And this "millionaire" probably has to start a new life again.

This story may be an extreme exception, but in fact, residents living in suburban woodland with woodpeckers have suffered a lot. Not only houses, but also wooden telephone poles, eaves or all kinds of wood decorations give woodpeckers a lot of opportunities to drill holes.

Cornell University's Department of Natural Resources has also investigated a variety of novel ways to ward off woodpeckers, such as placing a large plastic fake owl and flapping paper wings to deter woodpeckers. The Brid Pro speaker system can play the sound of a woodpecker being killed, as well as the cry of an eagle, to scare off woodpeckers.

People also made a feeder for woodpeckers, using professional food to attract birds to avoid damage to the house. unexpectedly, the food brought not only birds but also squirrels. Woodpecker damage to the wallboard is even more serious.

They tried to frighten the woodpecker with the fake owl. | after the investigation of Ref. 5, the researchers found that the most effective method is not complicated, but the simplest is to hang shiny decorations for the house or paint the house with color or white paint. Houses close to earthy colors suffer the most damage.

But what's wrong with acorn woodpeckers? Nature experts believe that since humans occupy the original living space of woodpeckers, they should plant more pine trees for them in the nearby woods to provide them with enough places to drill holes.

Woodpeckers may be the biggest losers.

Woodpecker: where's my meal? references

[1] https://www.thedodo.com/daily-dodo/guy-cuts-hole-in-wall-and-is-shocked-by-what-comes-pouring-out

[2] https://www.npr.org/2023/02/08/1155458695/woodpeckers-700-pounds-acorns-in-wall-home

[3] https://academy.allaboutbirds.org/storing-food-the-granaries-of-acorn-woodpeckers/

[4] https://www.kqed.org/science/1925251/youd-never-guess-what-an-acorn-woodpecker-eats#:~:text=%E2%80%9CThe%20point%20of%20storing%20the,from%20deer%2C%20squirrels%20and%20jays.

[5] Harding, Emily G., Sandra L. Vehrencamp, and Paul D. Curtis. "External characteristics of houses prone to woodpecker damage." Human-Wildlife Conflicts 3.1 (2009): 136144.

This article is from the official Wechat account: bring Science Home (ID:steamforkids), author: everything.

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