Articles From Dr. Rob

Written by Dr. Rob Fergus

Indian Peafowl (Pavo cristatus) are large impressive birds native to south Asia. It is the national bird of India, and justifiably famous around the world for the male’s colorful blue plumage and impressive spread tail displays. They are popularly maintained as a semi-domesticated poultry species adding ambiance to large parks and estates in towns and cities across the United States and around the world. While peafowl are attractive, they need a lot of room and are hard to keep from roaming—which is why they can appear as escapees just about anywhere. Wild flocks have even become established in some places, including Arcadia and Palos Verdes, California, the foothills of the Toquima mountains in central Nevada, parts of Florida including Coconut Grove and Longboat Key, and on Oahu, Hawaii.

Peafowl can be a problem if they show up to roost in your trees or feed on your flower beds. When this happens, the first thing to determine is if these are escaped birds—in which case their owners need to be contacted so they can remove and make reparations for any damages done by their livestock. If the birds are part of a feral population, then your local government may have policies or plans in place for how to deal with the birds.

woodpecker deterrents Written by Dr. Rob Fergus

Woodpeckers can cause several kinds of problems on buildings. In dealing with woodpeckers, a little bit of knowledge about them goes a long way. Most important is to realize that dead or hollow trees and tree limbs are central to their habitat needs. That is where they excavate holes for nests or to roost for the night, and where they spend a lot of time looking for insect grubs living under tree bark. Unfortunately, in our modern neighborhoods, we tend to remove most of the dead or dying trees, so the birds are forced to look elsewhere to meet their needs. That may mean your house, especially if it has wood siding, stucco, or soft artificial siding that they can easily hammer into. So these birds are treating your house as a huge tree substitute.

In addition, like all native birds, woodpeckers are protected by federal law, so they cannot be killed and any nests with eggs or babies cannot be disturbed. So we need to find a humane way to deal with them when they make your house their home too.

The challenge with most kinds of woodpecker challenges is to find a way to keep the birds from physically being able to land on your house and treat it like a giant tree. Netting or some other physical barrier that prevents them from landing on the house is the best bet, but of course if every exterior wall of your home is a potential tree substitute for them to land on, that can be a huge challenge. Physical remedies are always better than behavioral remedies that may try to scare the bird away, as most woodpeckers are going to be living in your neighborhood 24/7 and they may eventually determine that the things you are using to try and scare them are not really a threat.

Lets take the most typical woodpecker challenges, starting with some of the easier ones to deal with and ending up with the more difficult challenges.

Prowling Peacocks

Woodpeckers

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