This page provides problem-solving advice and ways you can make your yard or home less attractive to woodpeckers in the first place.
For more information on these birds, including what they look like, what they eat and where they live in the forest preserves, visit the main woodpeckers page.
Confine the bird to one room, turn off the lights, and open a door or window. Leave the room. The bird will instinctively fly to the light and escape. Determine how it got in and seal any openings.
Woodpeckers peck and drum for different reasons. Here are ways you can keep them from doing so on your house.
Woodpeckers find insects by listening for the sounds they make inside wood. They can’t tell the difference between a burrowing insect and buzzing electricity, though, so they may drill holes in siding if they hear electricity traveling through conduit in the walls of your house.
When a woodpecker persistently hammers at an area in the spring but doesn’t make a cavity, it’s likely “drumming” to attract a mate or announce its territory. It usually chooses something that makes a loud, resonating sound, such as a metal chimney cap, and will visit the site regularly. If you can cover the object with a blanket or foam rubber to muffle the sound, the bird may stop.
Woodpeckers may try to build nesting cavities in loose knots in cedar siding, sometimes starting a hole and then abandoning it to start another. If you can discourage a woodpecker before it finishes a cavity, it may relocate, but it also may return next year. It’s an uncommon, seasonal, temporary behavior but one that’s difficult to control. A combination of scare tactics and prompt repair of the excavation area may help.
All native birds, a category that includes woodpeckers, are protected by the 1918 Migratory Bird Treaty Act. It is illegal to:
The law does not protect nonnative pigeons (rock doves), English house sparrows or European starlings.
Birds in DuPage County can carry West Nile virus, but people who acquire the virus do so after being bitten by an infected mosquito and not by coming in direct or indirect contact with an infected bird.
A Woodpecker in Your House
How to Make Your Home Less Attractive
What You Should Never Do
Public Health Concerns
If you find a wild animal that looks injured or orphaned, leave it alone and call the Forest Preserve District's Willowbrook Wildlife Center at 630-942-6200. Recordings offer general advice when the center is closed.
Or visit the wildlife rescue advice page.
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