We have a couple out here on the mountainside in Trabuco Canyon, CA, who routinely hammer away on the eaves of the third story of our house . . . around 6 a.m. Now, that does not move me to strangle them, but it affords a route of entrance to termites, which has proven to be an ongoing problem. Until we heard the woodpeckers going at it, we could not figure out how the termites managed to get through the thick coats of paint on the woodwork But, as Jeff Goldblum's character famously said in "Jurassic Park," "Nature finds a way." One can hear the little darlings rat-atat-tatting away all over the mountainside, which we kind of enjoyed as part of the song of Nature, . . . until they went to work on our house. Now, we think of them as our exterminators' full employment program.
it appears that that the local woodpeckers have not read the ornithology books stating that they do this to go after bugs, since there are not a whole lot of bugs to be found in cured and painted wood . . . at least not until the woodpeckers afford the termites an entrance.
A little further north of here, around Irvine Lake, the woodpeckers tap out straight lines of holes encircling the trunks of the LIve Oaks, row upon row, whereupon the local squirrels stow an oak acorn in almost every hole for future use, so that virtually every tree trunk is studded with dozens of rings of embedded acorns.
Recently, we saw one of those pileated woodpeckers, the first time we'd ever seen one around here. Generally, we have a couple of other species, but not those big guys.
