Woodpeckers in Rossmoor may soon end up in sharpshooter's cross hairs | Outposts | Los Angeles Times: "Woody Woodpecker was annoying, but real woodpeckers are incredible birds with complex social systems and an affinity for drilling holes in trees, in which they store food.

So why would anyone want to kill them?

In the upscale Bay Area retirement community of Rossmoor, it's because acorn woodpeckers (like that pictured above) have been mistaking wooden homes, built within the birds' natural habitat, as trees.

So after months of discussions, one homeowner's association has voted to shoot and kill the birds, while another association has decided to postpone plans to do the same for up to two months."
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Shu Bartholomew and Fred Pilot have been sending me links to this deplorable situation. Whenever we get a woodpecker in the trees around our house, whoever sees it first calls everybody to come watch it. I'm a fisherman and a hunter, but the idea of killing a woodpecker is so far from my consciousness that I can't quite grasp the rationale. Wooden houses are not a new idea. So far, woodpeckers have not destroyed any of them, I suspect. I guess it makes sense that somewhere there is an HOA that will find this the only course of action.
ps: I had to change the photo because Fred advised me that I had posted a photo of the pileated woodpecker instead of the acorn woodpecker. I stand corrected.
pps: Fred insisted that I post this picture instead, and I have to admit it is a good one.