'Chimney caps, vent pipes, gutters': Why some woodpeckers are major metal heads


MAY 31, 2024 7:00 AM ET
Sacha Pfeiffer



Yellow-shafted Flicker, Northern Flicker, Colaptes auratus.
Woodpeckers are known for banging on wood, but some individuals living in urban environments also bang on metal.
Education Images/Universal Images Group via Getty Images

[...]

I've seen and heard plenty of woodpeckers hammer on trees. But never on metal. So to find out why the bird was doing this, I called an expert: Kevin McGowan, an ornithologist at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology who recently created a course called "The Wonderful World of Woodpeckers."

McGowan said woodpeckers batter wood to find food, make a home, mark territory and attract a mate. But when they bash away at metal, "what the birds are trying to do is make as big a noise as possible," he said, "and a number of these guys have found that — you know what? If you hammer on metal, it's really loud!"

Woodpeckers primarily do this during the springtime breeding season, and their metallic racket has two purposes, "basically summarized as: All other guys stay away, all the girls come to me," McGowan said. "And the bigger the noise, the better."

Over time, some urban woodpeckers have learned that metal is more resonant and reverberant than wood, and amplifies sound much more than trees do, he added.

[...]