Back Yard Critters

Brianna and I were woken up at 5 AM this morning by a drumming sound outside the eastern wall of the bedroom - I couldn't fall back asleep, but Brianna managed it. Later in the day I remembered some sort of bird causing a similar noise back at my parents' place a few years ago. I called Dad up tonight to see if he had any suggestions. He thought it was probably a Flicker, a type of woodpecker, but did not have any suggestions about how to keep the bird away (I'm going to be highly annoyed if this bird showed up at our house because we have a birdfeeder now). I did a quick Google search, and based on the second sound clip at this link, titled "drums", we totally have a Northern Flicker in the neighborhood. Ugh.

http://www.allaboutbirds.org/guide/northern_flicker/id

Found a couple more dead rodents in the backyard this afternoon. Maybe if I throw Bob up on the roof, he can take care of my bird problem for me as well. It seems worth a try.

Finally, I found two small-but-growing wasps' nests in the shed today. Unfortunately, one was right at the entrance to the shed, and blocked access to the wasp-killing spray I had purchased to take care of a previous nest. I sent Brianna back inside, then squished the first nest with a cutting board and wiped out the second once I could grab the spray. Then I found the knot-hole in the soffit that let these pests keep accessing the shed and plugged it with my last bit of scrap wood.