When we finally moved into our lake villa in March 2022, it was a chaotic time. Due to unforeseen complications with our prospective lender, when we left our previous home, we did not own the Oregon property. We had sold our home in Arizona, and stalled leaving that home as long as possible (even paying the new owner a month of rent), but in the end we had to be out. Our moving truck ended up being too small, and our friends benefitted from many last minute gifts bestowed upon them that wouldn’t fit in the truck. It was a stressful two or three days, but we finally hit the road and ended up in Lakeside after two and a half long days of driving with me, our son, and our housecat in the moving truck, and Sherri, two of our good friends, and our dog in the one car we didn’t sell before moving. Quite a cavalcade! Upon arrival, our financing still had not come through (funding a boat-access only property give many lenders pause), so we took up residence in the local lodge, which became our home for…wait for it…30 days. Finally things slid into place and we were able to move in. What a joyous day that was.
In the first few days after we moved in, we began noticing a strange noise coming from the roof at irregular intervals. It sounded mechanical, like something trying to spin but desperately in need of lubrication. Our first thought was that there was a rusty whirlybird up there being turned here and there by random breezes. However, we didn’t notice the wind blowing at the time the noises occurred, and when we did notice the wind blowing, there were no noises. The mystery deepened.
This went on for several months. After the fiasco of waiting at the lodge for a month, and intricacies involved in moving all of our worldly possessions across a lake, we didn’t make much time for investigation. We were also so busy with getting settled and handling our full time jobs that we didn’t look into it, but every time we heard the noise, we’d look at each other with a ‘wtf’ expression.
As things settled into more or less of a routine, and the PTSD of the move dissipated, we found time to really stop and listen intently when the noise occurred. We noticed it was less like a rusty mechanical noise, and more like a thrumming against metal. After many false starts and bad pictures, we managed to catch the instigator red handed:

It was some sort of woodpecker, drumming on our fireplace chimney cap. Mystery solved!
We’ve been struggling to get a full, good picture of these birds, so they’re not in the Flora and Fauna gallery on this website (yet). When they’re on the chimney, all we see is their head from the front deck. We can see the entire body of the bird from the back slope, but it’s so far away we don’t get good details (Christmas wish list: telephoto lens for our Nikon D3200…maybe this one or this one). However, we did manage to identify them from their call, which is quite distinctive – it’s a Pileated woodpecker. For some reason the guy above does not have a bright red crest like in other pictures, but the call is unmistakable. Perhaps the coloration a mating season thing, or this one was a juvenile at the time.
The other day, I did manage to capture some video of one of them on our chimney cap. It’s not very close and is backlit, but I captured both the call and the drumming, which you can hear clearly. I have to laugh at myself though – I got excited when the woodpecker drummed and the camera got shaky (or shakier). See the clip below. Talk soon!