‘Will Ferrell on steroids’: Woodpecker keeps clanging away on metal pole in OP
Spring is my favorite time of the year.
The pleasant weather is a call to open the windows of our homes and be treated to the smells of spring flowers, fresh cut grass and the sounds of birds doing their part to uphold the whole “birds and the bees” thing.
The joyous noise from our winged friends come in the form of chirps, peeps, short songs and ascending trills.
I love to hear the cooing exchanges between turtle doves. My dad taught me how to clasp my hands in a certain way and blow through the space between my thumbs to imitate the doves. It’s likely I’ve unwittingly made marriage proposals to dozens of turtle doves over the years by making the calls. The doves take commitment seriously. They mate for life.
My latest relationship with a bird also centers around avian musical tastes.
If my bigamous stringing along of all the turtle doves in my neighborhood are relationships based on love ballads, this new affair is solely based on heavy metal.
I’m in a drum-off with a woodpecker.
Several weeks ago while working with my window open in my second story home office, I heard what sounded like Will Ferrell on cowbell sped up by a factor of 50 times the speed of his famous Saturday Night Live skit. I couldn’t pinpoint exactly where the sound came from but it seemed to originate from across the street.
A few minutes after the initial clattering there was another rapid fire burst of metallic sounds. This round of noise was from my roof. I ran outside to see what was going on. I couldn’t see it, but I knew exactly what was causing the Ferrell on steroids noise. A woodpecker.
The woodpecker, a male Northern Flicker I later came to learn, started out drumming on the thin metal cap on top of a light pole directly across the street. He then made a visit to my house to try out the metal flashing in the valleys of my roof. Like the rest of my roof, the flashing didn’t measure up and Bonham the woodpecker returned to the light pole where it has been performing regularly for weeks. Of course a metal banging woodpecker should be named Bonham after Led Zeppelin’s legendary drummer, John Bonham.
I thought Bonham’s initial performance was going to be a one time gig. The guy’s passing through. He’s drunk on bug juice. He doesn’t know the difference between a tree and a metal pole. He’s just letting off some steam. It wasn’t until a couple of days later I noticed he was back at it again.
After a few days of consciously listening for the woodpecker while I worked from home, I started to see a pattern in when he would come by to perform. He drops by nearly hourly in the morning while his afternoon visits tend to be spaced further apart. His last performance is usually around 4 or 5 p.m. on any given day. Thank goodness he takes the nights off.
Knowing the best times to see him led me to attempt to catch his act on video. My first attempt was by going out on my driveway to use my cellphone’s video camera. I first recorded him by using the full zoom function of my iPhone but the bird was still small in the frame and the quality of the audio wasn’t as good as I had hoped for.
My next step was to try to capture the performance on a high-end camera with a super-telephoto lens and a good microphone. I set up my Nikon D5 on a tripod with a 400mm lens with a device called a teleconverter added to it which extends the lens’ focal length to 560mm. The whole setup sort of looks like a telescope to the untrained eye.
I set the camera rig in my front yard and framed up the top of the pole in my viewfinder waiting for the woodpecker to show up. If you want to draw people’s attention, stand in your front yard and stare up at the sky. Add a giant camera for a weirdness factor. Yes, I got questions from at least one woman walking her dog. After about 45 minutes in the yard and not seeing my friend Bonham, I decided this is about how long I would go before calling authorities to check on someone’s odd behavior so I packed up the camera and headed inside.
Bonham’s performances vary but he rarely sticks around for more than five minutes at a time. That made the idea of capturing the drumming on video unlikely if I had to run out the door and get reset every time I heard the drumming while working in my office. I had to find a way I could respond quickly to get the shot I wanted.
I set up the camera directly behind the desk chair in my office. I could now respond quickly to the sound of the woodpecker trying to vandalize one of Overland Park’s light poles. With a shotgun microphone attached to the camera I could point it directly at the source of the sound to get quality audio for the video. A shotgun microphone can be pointed precisely where you want to gather sound from and is great for singling out the thing you really want to hear.
The screen was on my window for the first day of this set up. As I worked through the day I took the opportunity a couple of times to stop and record the woodpecker drumming along. Sometimes having a screen in front of a really long lens will have little effect and will go undetected in the shot. That was not the case here. Day one with the camera in my office was a wash.
The next day I removed the screen. It’s not bug season yet so I felt safe doing so. Without the screen it was easy to see from outside of my house that I had a giant camera pointed in the general direction of my neighbors’ homes. I am glad that I’ve laid the groundwork to let my neighbors know I’m just the odd guy who’s always out taking photos and videos in his yard. I had a clear view of the top of the woodpecker’s throne and nobody was calling the authorities about a peeping Tom.
While the bird’s appearances seemed to be predictable the day before, once I had everything set perfectly, his morning stops suddenly weren’t happening. I knew getting shots of wildlife required patience. That’s one reason I’m not a wildlife photographer.
I wanted video of this guy doing his thing and I wanted it now. Maybe I could summon the woodpecker with some kind of call. That’s when it hit me. What I needed was more cowbell. Fortunately I had one within reach of my desk thanks to my family and their knowledge of how much I love Will Ferrell. I even had a drumstick.
With no idea of what I was doing and an earworm of a Blue Öyster Cult song and visions of Christopher Walken demanding “more cowbell” running through my brain, I attempted to imitate the machine gun rhythm banged out by my red capped pal. I did this a couple of times at a beat probably a fifth that of what the woodpecker could produce. Was this how you texted a woodpecker?
No response. Maybe I just scared him off.
The payoff came about an hour after the attempt to DM my buddy Bonham. My prime position and ability to respond quickly worked. The woodpecker made many stops at the pole on Wednesday giving me several minutes of footage of its noisy performances. One of its shows ended around 11 a.m. when it had to compete with the monthly test of the local tornado sirens.
It’s fortunate the bird is returning. When I researched why woodpeckers hammer on metal objects I found that it’s done as a form of communication and to let other birds know they have claimed territory. My cowbell call could have signaled that I was challenging the woodpecker’s territory and he could have decided to not return. The online CornellLab of Ornithology by Cornell University has a site that is an excellent source for anything you need to know about birds. They even have an app you can download to identify birds by their calls.
I’ll be glad to listen to Bonham play all summer long if he sticks around that long. Some people get upset with animal behavior like this in urban areas. For me it’s clear that we’ve moved into their environment and they’re doing their best to live with the changes we’ve put upon them.
More cowbell my woodpecker friend.
Having trouble seeing the video? Watch it here.
