After This Man Began Renovations, He Realized A Woodpecker Had Been Secretly Using His Pool House
The regular holes drilled into the wooden
side paneling of his pool house were bad enough.
But then Mark Von Thaden pulled back the insulation strips fastened to the inside wall.
What he discovered behind was so astonishing, he grabbed his camera just to prove what havoc
a family of woodpeckers could wreak.
The cartoon characterization of Woody Woodpecker might sum up what many of us think about them
– cute but cheeky.
Of course, drilling through everything from houses to cars in a cartoon might be amusing.
But when it’s damaging your own property, then the joke might wear thin.
Fire department captain Von Thaden certainly thought so.
He lives near Sacramento, California, a natural habitat for acorn woodpeckers.
In early February 2018 he decided to make some upgrades to his pool house.
When he set out, he surely had little idea of what he would find.
In a video posted to social media, Von Thaden begins by explaining to the camera, “So
I’m doing some remodeling in the pool house here, and I decided to change out the siding
on one of the rooms.”
So far, so good.
But then Von Thaden’s tone changes.
Raising his eyebrows, he continues, “I’ve determined I hate woodpeckers.
And this is the reason why.”
Slowly swinging the camera around to show the exposed inside walls of the building,
the reason for his ire becomes clear.
For the viewer can see that the wooden paneling is pockmarked with small, regular cavities.
Von Thaden explains the source of the damage.
“The walls are just completely filled with holes from the woodpecker,” he says.
As though that wasn’t bad enough, there was more to come.
Panning the camera down to the ground, we can see piles of what seems to be thousands
of nuts up against the walls of building.
The irked cameraman explains, “Now when I pulled the insulation off, this is what
I found.
That’s real, folks!
That’s a lot of acorns.”
Luckily for us, he has left one last panel of wall insulation untouched.
It means we will get the full effect when it is stripped back from the wall.
Building up the suspense, the homeowner tells us, “I’m going to pull off one of these
panels here and we’ll see just how many acorns are behind this panel.
Here we go.”
So, cautiously and perhaps somewhat bravely, he sets to work with his bare hands.
Starting at the bottom, the homeowner pulls back the remaining yellow glass wool insulation
away from the wall.
Immediately, a torrent of acorns floods out.
There is a brief pause in the flow, before he removes more insulation and another flood
of acorns tumble down.
After another hiatus where perhaps a blockage of the nuts had accumulated, the insulation
is further stripped back and a further deluge ensues.
As the video ends to a continuing trickle of nuts, Von Thaden pans back, observing the
almost unbelievable scene with his camera.
He would be within his rights to rage about the damage caused to his property.
But for a final time, he simply laments, “Oh, how I hate woodpeckers.”
Surely the viewer has every sympathy for Von Thaden and his unenviable clean-up job.
But on watching the clip, you might feel a little sorry for the woodpeckers, too.
Because, following their natural instincts, they had obviously tried to hoard the acorns
for food.
In the wild, a family of acorn woodpeckers will bore holes into a tree in which they
will store acorns to future sustenance.
This becomes what is called a “granary tree.”
One granary tree can contain a stash of thousands of nuts, and they are quite a thing to behold.
However, in more built-up areas, woodpeckers might try to create a granary tree out of
telegraph poles, outdoor buildings or even homes.
In Von Thaden’s case, it seems the woodpeckers had bored holes in the pool house walls and
popped the nuts in.
Sadly, they had then fallen down inside the wall and could not be retrieved.
Global guidebook Atlas Obscura reports that Walt Koenig, senior scientist at the Cornell
Lab of Ornithology, has limited sympathy for homeowners complaining of woodpecker damage.
He advises them to move out of their homes, raze them to the ground and rebuild them out
of material impenetrable to woodpeckers instead.
He is joking, of course, but there is an element of steeliness to his words.
“There are various ways you can stop them,” he is quoted by Atlas Obscura.
“But basically if you’re living in the middle of a good acorn woodpecker habitat,
you really should have thought of that.”
And if you thought creating larders out of trees was incredible enough, woodpeckers have
some other very unique characteristics.
Koenig explains that acorn woodpeckers live in groups of up to 15.
While this group can help with making granary stores and raising young, it may have to navigate
complicated matters of the heart.
Incest among bird and animal species in the wild is usually pretty uncommon because of
plentiful available partners.
But in these relatively small insular woodpecker groups, where there might be only a couple
of females, it is all but a given.
What’s more, Koenig reveals that if there are only two female woodpeckers in a nest,
they will be in competition with each other.
Unless their egg laying is synchronized, one female will throw the other’s eggs out of
the nest so they don’t hatch first.
These cast-out eggs will then serve as a tasty snack for other family members.
It’s safe to say that there’s a lot more to woodpeckers than a lovable cartoon personality.
And if you live in a prime acorn woodpecker habitat, you really can’t complain if they
use your property as a grain store.
You might even cut them some slack – after all, it’s tough out there for a polyamorous,
food-hoarding bird.