Woodpeckers make Swiss cheese of vacation home

HILTON HEAD ISLAND, S.C. — The last two times Tom and Kathy Fromme visited their Hilton Head Island, S.C., vacation home from Virginia, they found three softball-sized holes in their house.

Their problem wasn’t rats. Or raccoons. Or termites. Or neighbors who didn’t like them.

Pileated woodpeckers, the large, red-mohawked birds known for their loud screeches and jackhammer-like pounding, took a liking to the Fromme’s two-story, eggshell-white home in Palmetto Dunes, S.C.

When the Frommes visited around Memorial Day, they found three holes in their cedar-planked chimney. They spent $4,500 patching the holes and hanging a fake owl to keep the birds away.

But when they returned on a recent Saturday, they found three more holes on the other side of the house and a smattering of feathers, waste and six discarded egg shells in their attic.

“It’s pretty clear they nested in there,” Tom Fromme said. “And they left behind quite a mess — and a smell.”

And, of course, a nasty cleanup project and another repair bill.

“They’re beautiful birds,” Tom Fromme said, gazing up about 15 feet at the unsightly gashes covered with duct tape on his house. “But they’re costing me a lot of money.”

He estimated the bill for fixing both sides of the house will amount to more than $6,000.

The pileated, the largest woodpeckers in most of North America, stand nearly 1.5 feet tall and are fairly common on Hilton Head Island. The birds feed on insects, primarily carpenter ants and woodboring beetle larvae, and hollow out nests as large as 8 inches wide and 2 feet deep.

“I’ve been here 31 years, and I don’t know a day I’ve been here that I haven’t seen one,” said Mark Ellis, president of Ellis Construction and the Hilton Head Area Homebuilders Association.

Though his business doesn’t receive many calls to fix woodpecker holes, he said many of the companies he has worked with do.

Hilton Head Island’s Critter Management fields calls about pileated woodpeckers almost daily, said operations director Bill Karijanian.

He said he’s seen holes in the sides of homes as big as a basketball, and the company has done repairs costing as much as $10,000.

“I’ve seen where they’ve gone through the exterior of the house and all the way through the Sheetrock,” he said. “We’ve walked into upstairs bedrooms and seen all the way through to the outside.”

Unlike rats, squirrels, raccoons and other nuisance animals, pileated woodpeckers are protected by federal and state governments, making them more difficult to deal with, he said.

“We can’t trap them, shoot them or anything else,” Karijanian said. “We’ve got to be creative.”

Critter Management crews hang plastic owls from roofs, line attics with steel mesh and use other trade secrets to keep homes woodpecker-proof, he said.

Most woodpecker problems seem to originate in Palmetto Dunes, where many homes are owned by part-time residents, several sources said.

Phil Porter, the Frommes’ next-door neighbor, discovered the birds pecking away at the house and tried to shoo them away by throwing pinecones at them.

“They just kept coming back,” said Porter, a Realtor who’s had problems with the birds on his own house. “You can see them all over the neighborhood. A lot of our neighbors have had problems with them, too.”

Tom and Kathy Fromme just want their winged intruders to find another home.

“When we come down here, we want to relax and go to the beach,” Kathy Fromme said.

Tom Fromme added: “I just wish they’d find a nice tree — anywhere other than our house.”