The woodpeckers pecked a hole right through the urethane foam I used to fill it. It was confusing, because it means for sure they weren’t digging for bugs. No bugs in urethane foam, yaknow? I went back up and took a look, and this time, they had gone right through the insulating board and into the roof. At least this time their purpose was clear: a pile of sticks meant that they were building a home. It’s not the time for baby birds, but there’s really no other way for the sticks to have gotten in the hole.

Well, identifying their purpose at least gave me a lead for trying to get them off my house. First, I filled the holes with more urethane, then I applied a bad-tasting and smelling woodpekcer-repellent spray. Finally, I hung strips of mylar from the eave, which is supposed to dissuade the bird.

You can’t see the urethane foam because I painted over it.

The last thing I did was build a nice woodpecker-house, in hopes of convincing the birds to nest there instead of my eaves. I even put a suet cake on top of the lid, in order to try to get the bird to notice the house.

This is pretty much the limit of the amount of effort that I care to go to in order to keep this bird from damaging my home. If this doesn’t work, and if no other ideas present themselves for deterring it, the shotgun is going to come out, and that will be that.