The male pileated woodpecker has been attacking residents’ cars in Rockport during his mating season
- A male woodpecker in Massachusetts was caught vandalizing vehicles amid the bird’s mating season
- Resident Janelle Favaloro tells PEOPLE that the pileated woodpecker in question is responsible for smashing at least 25 car mirrors
- Experts say the mating season for the pileated woodpecker can last until June
A Rockport, Mass., neighborhood is getting vandalized by an unlikely criminal — a pileated woodpecker.
Rockport resident Janelle Favaloro says she was among the first to realize that a local woodpecker was behind a rash of car mirror smashings. Favaloro tells PEOPLE she spotted the male woodpecker destroying one of the 25 mirrors he has busted so far. After this break in Rockport’s car vandalism case, Favaloro posted a comical description of the bird’s business on a neighborhood Facebook group.
“There has been a vandal breaking vehicle mirrors,” Favaloro wrote. “He is described as 18″ -24″ tall, wearing black and white, with a red hat.”
The post, which went up on April 1, was not an April Fool’s prank.
“My neighbors started commenting and saying, ‘Oh my god, we had two mirrors broken too!’ So it became a viral neighborhood thing,” Favaloro, 59, tells PEOPLE. “Then we realized that he was basically canvassing the whole top of the hill we live on. It’s pretty wooded up here, so he has claimed this as his territory.”
Pileated woodpeckers are the inspiration behind the cartoon Woody Woodpecker and sit tall as a crow-sized bird, according to All About Birds.
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Experts believe the bad boy bird of Rockport, who’s in the midst of mating season, saw his reflection in the car mirrors and mistook it for a rival, leading to his pecking “attack.”
“This time of year is mating season, so all birds, not just pileated woodpeckers, but all birds are getting into a very aggressive, territorial courtship display,” Ron Magill, the Zoo Miami communications director, told Today. “If they’re seeing the reflection of themselves, they don’t understand it’s a reflection; they think it’s a competitor.”
Favaloro tells PEOPLE that the damage began in March, and she and her husband were initially stumped. However, since her Facebook post, other neighbors have come forward, sharing their stories of damage, including one man’s truck window that got a giant crack from the woodpecker while the driver was inside.
“It’s wildlife, so you can’t really do a whole lot about it,” Favaloro notes. “But I think you just have to look at it with a sense of humor. It’s for a limited amount of time. It’s definitely inconvenient for some people. I think it’s really entertaining … I think, for the most part, the neighborhood is just embracing it and going with it.”
The longtime Massachusetts resident explains that many of her neighbors don’t have garages and have had to get creative when it comes to protecting their mirrors.
“A lot of people are just pulling their mirrors in, folding them in, several people have put small trash bags on them, like the grocery bags,” she shares. “My next door neighbor put some scarves on there just to cover the glass. You just do what you gotta do.”
Janelle Favaloro
The woodpecker’s mating season is said to last until June, and Favaloro has a message for her neighborhood menace.
“This is not really the best way to attract a mate,” she teases. “I don’t think the women are going to be impressed.”