THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Friday, May 12, 1995 TAG: 9505120452
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY FRANCIE LATOUR, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: CHESAPEAKE LENGTH: Medium: 86 lines
Chesapeake's Central Library has a new breed of patron flocking to its building and bent on destruction.
About 25 northern flicker woodpeckers have chiseled their way into the facade of the new library, where they're settling in for the summer nesting season.
While unsuspecting residents passed through the building's hushed, automated doors, the birds above them bored 4-inch holes into all 12, stucco-coated faux columns.
No one in the city knows what to do about it.
Northern flickers, common in the region, are a threatened species. Federal law prohibits harming or removing the animals once they nest.
That leaves maintenance workers with limited options: surround the roof with inflatable owls to frighten off the flickers. Or, as a last, loud, resort, play recorded gun blasts to scare the birds away.
Library Manager Charles H. Anderson discovered the invasion after hearing a strange, rat-a-tat-tat outside his office about a month ago.
He took reference books outside and tried to identify the woodpeckers.
Parks and Recreation Superintendent Jim Crowley has been charged with finding an answer to the flicker problem.
``Last year, it was just one that came and left,'' Crowley said. ``This year, he must have told his friends, because there's a bunch of them.''
Crowley, saying he had exhausted every humane option for evicting the flickers, eventually tried to enlist a private pest control company.
``They wouldn't even come out here and deal with them, because they're flickers,'' Crowley said.
Some who had experience with flickers recommended that Crowley install inflatable owls, which woodpeckers might mistake as real enemies.
``It is our plan to do that,'' Crowley said, ``surround the building with blow-up owl faces with big eyes in them.''
Robert K. Rose, a biology professor at Old Dominion University, said the fake owls won't work for more than a day or two. The birds quickly get used to them, he said.
One plastic owl that Crowley had installed blew off the roof and is now hanging in the children's reading room.
Though the birds' excavation work hasn't disturbed readers, the city will have to patch the holes to prevent bees and other birds from nesting in the cavities.
With no solution in sight, Crowley said he feared the problem could tarnish his job performance.
``I can see it now:,'' Crowley said. ``Inability to deter flickers.''
Councilman Alan P. Krasnoff drew little sympathy when he described the invasion to his colleagues in a meeting on Tuesday.
One, Councilman John E. Allen, mimed up a permanent - if brutal - solution, by cocking an imaginary shotgun in the air.
The northern flicker gets its name from its loud call, which sounds like the word ``flicker.''
Library manager Anderson has a theory about the birds' homeport:
``I'm not a woodpecker,'' Anderson said, ``but I would assume they would like some peace and quiet like the rest of us who come to Chesapeake.'' ILLUSTRATION: Color photos
MORT FRYMAN/Staff
The flicker gets its name from its loud wick-wick-wick kee-yer call,
which sounds like the word ``flicker.''
A flicker drills into a column at Chesapeake's Central Library. The
city will have to patch the holes to prevent bees and other birds
from nesting.
by CNB