Moving in at The Wallow involved a bit of reclaiming the house from the nature that had run rampant in the absence of people. The main project was mowing the yard, which had become insanely overrun with weeds. The other thing that turned into a huge project was the fact that woodpeckers were dining on our home.

This is a picture looking two stories up from the ground to the main area of damage. Those lighter orange-ish areas are holes. The one right over the window ended up nearly golf ball sized:

I searched the internet for how to deter woodpeckers from pecking away at your home. I learned that they were likely going after bugs. At this same time, we had massive numbers of wasps flying around the eaves of the house. Could they be the culprit? We decided to start with ridding the house of wasps. This alone involved a bit of adventure, since we didn’t own a ladder big enough to reach the roof.

Here’s me leaning out my window in goggles and a bandanna, about to spray as best I can:

Also, I hung suet cakes off of the house and about in the trees, hoping to entice the woodpeckers to peck away at something else.

Spraying for wasps from the window was only marginally helpful. Plus, we really needed to get up there and patch the holes. Joshua and I ended up buying a 32 foot extension ladder. That thing is scary! Joshua’s the only one of us who climbs up, but it’s even kind of nerve-wracking for me to watch from the ground.

After acquiring the scary-ladder, Joshua sprayed for the wasps and plugged all the holes. A few days later, there were still much fewer wasps about, but the holes were back! The woodpeckers were pecking right into the hardened foam used to close up the holes!

Joshua and I went back to the internet. We found suggestions for a spray that deters the birds by being bad-tasting (but not harmful). Others suggested hanging mylar strips from the house to make the birds think something else living was up there. Okay.

Upon going back up the ladder to re-fix the holes, Joshua discovered that the woodpecker in question was actually making a home inside our house. This reinforced our desire to have this stop right away. In several steps, Joshua foamed the holes, painted over the holes, sprayed the bad-tasting stuff, and hung the mylar banner we made.

In this picture you can make out the mylar, swinging wildly to the left in the breeze, and see that the holes are no longer visible:

As a final step, Joshua made a woodpecker bird house and hung it high in a tree where they’ve been eating suet cakes. He put a suet cake right on top of it to make the birdhouse as enticing as possible:

Since all of this, we have neither seen nor heard any evidence of woodpeckers on the house. Did the bad-tasting stuff work? The mylar? Giving them a better home to choose? Or did all of this simply coincide with winter and we’ll find in the spring that we still have a problem? Unknown. For now, the knocking has stopped and the house is unapproved-hole-free. I hope it stays that way.