NATURE Holes in a pole: Woodpeckers do big damage

The woodpeckers pecked 15 holes into a telephone pole.
By JOSH ECHT
VINDICATOR STAFF WRITER
YOUNGSTOWN -- Homeowner Steve Fabry didn't want to offend the woodpeckers in his yard last week.
They wound up offending him, pecking 15 4-inch holes into a nearby telephone pole.
Fabry, 75, a lifelong Youngstown resident, said he was sitting on his porch and heard woodpeckers.
"The first time I saw them, I saw one of them was trying to stick its beak into the metal screen of a neighbor's chimney," he said.
He left momentarily, but quickly saw what two of them had done to his telephone pole.
"They pecked 15 holes at least 2 inches deep," he said.
Fabry said the black woodpeckers he saw were full grown, about 10 inches beak-to-tail. He said he was intrigued by the noise the woodpeckers made.
"It's amazing to see the head bob back and forth," he said, "like a head of a hammer."
Fabry didn't understand why the woodpeckers would attempt to search for food in a telephone pole consisting of dried up wood. He will notify the electric company soon, he said.
"That pole was there before 1960, providing electricity to my neighbor's house," he said. "Why the birds would try to get grubs from the pole's dead wood is beyond me.
"It's like a carpenter shop out here," he said.