How to Recognize Woodpeckers by Their Drumming Sounds
31 comments
·April 8, 2025quercusa
There's nothing quite like the sound of a flicker hammering on a downspout at 4 am!
caseyohara
I have nuthatches that peck and bore large holes in my cedar siding in the spring to nest. They showed up about two weeks ago and they’ll be here through summer.
The sound is obnoxious and they’ve basically destroyed my house. I’ve tried everything to keep them away but they are tenacious. We’re currently saving up to reside the house with Hardie Board; I think that’s the only solution.
olyjohn
Couple of years ago, they were doing this to me every... single... day... at 4am. Nothing really scares them off. I would go outside and try to wave them off. They go just far enough to get out of your reach, or just hide on the back side of a tree trunk. Then they do that stupid Woody Woodpecker laugh, and fly right back when you go inside. I now see where Woody Woodpecker got his personality from. What a dick.
bigstrat2003
I hate woodpeckers. We had a solid year or two where there was one putting holes in our house and it just would not leave us alone. Eventually we were able to figure out a way to prevent it from perching, but until then I was on the verge of wanting to sell the house just to get away from the thing. I used to joke that the people who made the migratory birds treaty which protects woodpeckers only did so because they never had to deal with one before.
dpb001
We had the variety that was able to grab onto the edges exposed by the seams in our vertical cedar siding and so had holes at random places in the wall, far away from perching locations. Owl and crow decoys plus reflective discs dangling in the wind seemed to help but it’s hard to do A/B testing for this. The house was due for another coat of stain and after that they’ve stayed away - the new color is less tree-like so maybe that helps.
0x0203
Not listed is the red-bellied woodpecker. I've got one of them that drums on my gutters just outside my home office window every day. Multiple times a day. Fast, evenly spaced drumming with no variation or fall-off. Lasts 1-3 seconds. Maybe not quite as fast as the flicker, but close.
I thought he was putting holes in my house for a while until I figured out what he was doing. I have a lot of flickers around too, but don't hear them drumming very often.
rsolva
Yeah, we got these red-bellied wodpeckers here, knocking on the metal top of the poles of the electricity lines. Since the main inlet is connect to a wall in our bed room, they wake us up early in the morning by their drumming, resonationg through the electricity lines from near and far.
It have spent hours, half aslep, pondering what that sound could be, it took quite a while before I found the origin!
silisili
If you put a suet cage out, they'll usually go for that and leave your house alone.
I used to joke that they'll let you know when they're out of suet, by hammering your gutters to wake you up at 6am.
sdenton4
It's likely that they're drumming on the gutter because the metal is loud. Drumming is both a way to get at food by digging under the bark and a way to signal for territory+mating. The signaling is the main reason that the drumming patterns are distinct!
dreamcompiler
I used to put suet cages out. Then I'd walk outside on summer mornings to find my porch and gutters utterly destroyed. Finally figured out it was black bears that came in the night trying to get at the bird food.
So no more suet for the woodpeckers.
genewitch
if you have bears about you can't leave food out cmon people
0x0203
Amusingly, it wasn't until I put the feeder out (with suet and a bunch of other seed) that he started drumming. It wasn't right away; there was about a year or so where the red-bellied just came for the food. There were several different males and females back then. Now, I'm pretty sure it's just him. I've read that they can drum like this in part to mark territory, so maybe he's just trying to keep the food for himself. He still has to duke it out with all the other birds though. Can be pretty entertaining.
And fortunately, I'm usually up by 4 or 5 am anyway so he's never woken me up, but yes, he's banging away really early.
zabzonk
I loved hearing then in Hampstead Woods in North London, and also the trees along the New River (artificial canal intended to bring fresh water into the city, built in Tudor times) - but it was quite difficult to see the little buggers. I did have a spotted one come to our bird table in Lincoln UK a some years ago, and my little brother who lives near Grantham quite often sees them.
Lovely birds.
padolsey
This reminds me of how it's possible to decode prairie dog communication into literal 'words' that specify location of possible threats (lookup 'Slobodchikoff prarie dogs'). It's remarkable. Only made possible by the curious–albeit eccentric–human sitting in nature and listening in true analog.
And, on the topic of tapping, I imagine even the cadence of our keystrokes can be used to construct meaningful browser fingerprints. We are always emitting so many artefacts that can be used to construct rich identities. It's a bit terrifying from a surveillence perspective but also very satisfying to create order from noise.
0x0203
I'll have to dig it up (maybe if I get time tomorrow I'll try), but I've seen a couple research papers where they wrote software that got was pretty effective at decoding peoples passwords by listening to them type. Between different keys sounding slightly different, the timing between keystrokes, and an individual's personal typing patterns, it's not even all that difficult. So yes, that sort of thing has definitely been done.
lostlogin
People identifying machine status by sound is one I like.
I’m in radiology and knowing what the MR scanner is doing from a few rooms away is something many of us can do.
‘The TR is wrong’
Presumably common in other fields with noisy machines.
p1mrx
You could also try the BirdNET app: https://birdnet.cornell.edu/
mrgoldenbrown
Cornell also made Merlin, a similar app that works offline, which is handy when you're out in the wild trying to find birds. (BirdNET still relies on serverside processing I think)
tiahura
Given how much time they spend pecking my metal chimney cap, they seem like they must be one of the dumber birds.
CommieBobDole
According to the article, the drumming sound they make is for communication; pecking to find food is relatively quiet.
He's drumming on the metal chimney cap because it's the loudest thing he can find.
weard_beard
But what’s he saying? What’s in that tiny bird brain worth going on about at 4am? Cats? Smoke? Food? Bird problems, amirighht?
olyjohn
He's saying "I'm horny, where's the ladies?"
The hammering is how they find eachother over long distances. Just heard some the other day hammering on my gutter. Went out to scare him off, and lo and behold there were two pairs outside frolicking around in the trees.
A couple years ago I saw one while I was out on my back deck, he started hammering, then about 2 minutes later a female shows up, and they flew off together.
dangle1
"Listen to how loud your babies will be"
sohkamyung
Doesn't cover non-US Woodpeckers, so not useful to me here in Singapore.
tsurba
I actually enjoyed the article and the variety of drum beats, and the spectrograms, even though we have completely different woodpeckers here in Finland.
wrsh07
This is a somewhat ridiculous comment. The article says many things about what one should pay attention to in order to identify what species of woodpecker you're hearing, and I'm sure you could easily get a list of species that live near you with descriptions of their drumming.
Sample quote:
> It’s especially important to pay attention to speed and duration of the drumming
Imagine if someone described the different leaf characteristics (shapes, arrangement, edges, etc) and used local-to-them trees as illustrations. Is that useless to me? Or can I perhaps find an analog from the trees native to my city?
haunter
Is there a guide how to spot them? I live near a massive forest and I always hear them but never managed to actually see one. The sound is just coming from all over the place.
AlotOfReading
It might sound silly, but just close your eyes and listen. Your brain is very good at localizing sounds. Turn to see if the sound direction moves or becomes more distinguishable. Tilting your head or moving a few steps in any direction can help in some environments.
You'll develop an ear for it the more you practice. You might not be able to actually find the bird once you've found the tree. They can be hard to spot from the ground.
1659447091
> Your brain is very good at localizing sounds. ... You'll develop an ear for it the more you practice.
My grandfather would be able to do this almost instantly. We would be out on his ranch and hear them all the time; every once in awhile he would listen, turn and point in a direction to show me where the bird was that he spotted, and tell me what kind of woodpecker it was. I never saw the bird myself as much as he tried to point it out to me.
The man had hearing and vision super powers to me. He would spot edible plants in overgrown pasture and woods, spot a particular type of tree in the middle of a bunch of other trees and hear the location of wildlife stalking about the woods. And it was insane how much information he had about the natural world around us and the skill to utilize it.
Beautiful website.
Their media player with the spectrogram is wonderful and does so much to enhance the appreciation of each birdsong. As a lifelong synthesizer programmer and composer I appreciate the ability to visualize each song.
They even offer a quick-start guide for recording birdsong as well as a paid course to learn in greater depth. My kind of people!
Birds are endlessly fascinating and I'm delighted to see such a well presented ode to their beauty.