Why are Northern flickers intent on punching holes in a house?
DEAR JOAN >> Last year I hired a pest control company to come in and seal my house and trap any critters that were inside. My wife and I heard sounds coming from the attic of our two-story home and we thought that we had a problem with squirrels that live in the redwood trees beside our house.
As soon as the pest control people left, we had a bird outside our upstairs window and on our roof, so I had a plastic owl installed on the chimney. It worked for a little while, then the bird came back. We thought that we might just have to live with it, then my son got up in the attic and waited for the sounds to recur and he caught a glimpse of a bird and noticed holes in the mesh covering the air intake for the attic.
On closer inspection, all three attic air intakes on the redwood side of the house had holes in them and the birds were moving in and out, but we only would catch glimpses of them.
The pest control people installed new mesh coverings over the air intakes, then the birds got more aggressive. My son has been chasing them away when he hears them.
There doesn’t seem to be any nests in the attic crawl space. Any idea why the birds would be so attracted to this area of our home? My son thinks that they are Northern flickers.
— Gene Nokes, Dublin
DEAR GENE >> Northern flickers drum on houses and trees as a way to announce their ownership of the territory, to attract a mate or to create a cavity where they will nest.
If the drumming is rhythmic, it’s about territory and mating. If it’s irregular, the bird is excavating.
To give your son a break from being a human scarecrow, you can try placing metal flashing over the wood where the pecking is occurring, or hanging shiny objects in the area that will move with the wind. The flashes of light and the unpredictable nature of the movements will do a lot to scare the birds away. You could even create a curtain of streamers over the vents.
DEAR JOAN >> My two goats that I had had for 13 years were killed in 2014 in the Santa Cruz Mountains by a female mountain lion and her two large cubs. I know because the Puma Project captured the mother lion the next night and I watched her two cubs roam through my property when she was in the cage.
My goats, both 175 pounds each, had never been attacked by lions before, likely because it was clear to lions that they could never get the goats over my 6-foot fence. I agree with the San Jose rancher that the mom was taking advantage of my controlled environment to teach her cubs to hunt.
I now have a mountain lion-proof pen with heavyduty metal fencing on top and sides, harboring my two Nigerian dwarf goats. — Suse Shane,
Bonny Doon
DEAR SUSE >> Thanks for the additional confirmation about mountain lion mothers teaching their cubs to hunt. Stalking prey that can’t escape sounds like a good way to teach inexperienced cubs how to hunt, although it’s tragic for the goats.
I neglected to mention in a follow-up column that some people recommend keeping donkeys with livestock. Apparently large predators don’t like messing around with them.