WALNUT CREEK, CALIF. — To the woodpeckers, the ridge-top homes in Rossmoor are the perfect place to stash their food. For years, the energetic birds have bored holes in more than a dozen town houses and hidden acorns in the walls. The homes look as if they have been raked by machine-gun fire.
Residents of the retirement community have tried scaring them off with Mylar balloons that flap in the wind and giant battery-operated spiders that move toward the sound of a woodpecker hammering. They have erected screens and netting. They have blasted the birds with sonic devices. And they have painted the walls with chemical deterrents. But nothing works for long.
When they erected a wooden owl as a scarecrow, the woodpeckers landed on its head and pecked holes in it too.
And so the homeowners arranged to shoot them.
Under permits issued by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, two homeowners associations hired sharpshooters, who have killed 22 woodpeckers over the last year and a half. One association plans to shoot 18 more in the coming weeks.
The acorn woodpeckers are not endangered, but when word of the killings leaked out, it triggered protests from bird lovers and environmentalists, who are demanding an end to the extermination.
"It's always a serious proposition to kill native wildlife, and we have to exhaust other remedies first," said Dan Taylor, public policy director for Audubon California. "We don't believe Rossmoor has done that."
The clash over the woodpeckers is a variant on a familiar California story: Many people, like the retirees at Rossmoor, want to be close to nature. But they find that coyotes, deer or other wildlife encroach on their property, attack their pets, destroy their gardens or, as in the case of the woodpeckers, damage their homes.
"It's an attraction for most people, but it's a pain in the neck for some people," says Earl Orum, a 13-year Rossmoor resident who serves on a committee seeking to halt the woodpecker incursions.
Graham Chisholm, Audubon California's conservation director, put it this way: "It's not surprising that people want to live in an oak forest, but we need to find a way to live compatibly if that's where we choose to live."
Audubon California argues that shooting the woodpeckers will not solve the problem because others from nearby areas will simply move in.
