The first casualty was a side-view mirror.
Then another and another and another, until residents of one New England enclave said that the number had reached at least 20. The culprit apparently did not believe that it was bad luck to break mirrors — and still doesn’t.
Janelle Favaloro, 59, who has lived in the Squam Hill section of Rockport, Mass., for 36 years, put out an A.P.B. on Facebook for the menace.
“We have a vandal in the neighborhood,” Ms. Favaloro wrote. “He was described as 18 to 24 inches tall, wearing black and white with a red hat.”
The brazen suspect, who would become known to many in the neighborhood, was actually a pileated woodpecker, one of the largest forest bird species on the continent.
The male bird was marking his turf during mating season, which may explain some of the aggression. Residents recognized the bird by the distinctive red malar stripe along its cheekbone area, as well as by its size.
In the beginning, Ms. Favaloro nicknamed him “the pileated pillager.”
His siege is now entering its second month, bemusing residents and testing their ingenuity to prevent more widespread damage. Those without folding mirrors or garages have resorted to wrapping mirrors in plastic bags, sweatshirts or towels. But the angry bird would not be stopped, cracking the driver’s side window of at least one man’s pickup truck while he was sitting in it, the man said.
“When it landed on the window, I thought it was my girlfriend tapping on the window,” said Mike Foster, 30, who owns a landscaping business. “I was like, ‘Oh, I’m in trouble.’ It was staring me right in the eyes for a solid 30 seconds.”
Mr. Foster said the tinted glass of his Ford F-350 pickup truck has a “nice big crack.” By the time he had grabbed his phone to get a photo of the bird, he said, it flew off. He managed to capture only a slightly blurry image of the woodpecker in flight.
“That woodpecker is looking at 30 years to life right now, I think,” he said, chuckling.
Pileated woodpeckers are notoriously territorial, especially during mating season, said Matthew Fuxjager, a co-director of the Ecology and Evolutionary Biology graduate program at Brown University. That period can last a few months as the weather warms.
“They’re a ferocious bird, and they’re really strong,” he said, adding, “it’s the biomechanical equivalent of a hammer.”
He said that it was more than likely the same woodpecker tormenting the residents of Rockport. Birds can become agitated upon seeing their reflections, he said, but the Rockport woodpecker’s behavior “is pretty odd.”
Woodpeckers make their signature drumming noises to announce their presence to potential mates and rivals, the professor said. To study the territorial behavior of woodpeckers, he said, researchers would play sounds of other woodpeckers on a speaker, prompting them to fly up to the speaker and tap at it aggressively.
“Their testosterone levels are high,” Professor Fuxjager said. “They’re very ornery.”
Squam Hill, the besieged neighborhood, is next to a five-square-mile conservation area. It’s on Cape Ann, a coastal destination about 40 miles northeast of Boston that is a popular vacation spot.
Ms. Favaloro first noticed something unusual in late March, when, she said, both mirrors on a van belonging to her family’s home heating oil company had been broken while it was parked in the yard. Also nailed: a pickup truck. She said that she and her husband were puzzled.
“He kind of blamed our son,” she said. “He was like, ‘I don’t know. It wasn’t me.’”
A Toyota pickup owned by her brother-in-law, who lives next door, was also damaged, said Ms. Favaloro, who spotted the woodpecker perched on the windshield of a recreational vehicle that she and her husband own. She got a photo of the bird, and soon the image spread online and in the local news media, drawing the attention of The Gloucester Daily Times.
“He’s trying to eliminate his competition,” she said. “When he looks in the mirror, that’s what he sees. He’s beautiful.”
Not far away, Terry Francis, 74, said both mirrors on her husband’s Ram pickup truck were completely smashed.
“You still see him out here,” she said of the woodpecker. “Peck, peck, peck, peck.”
While her daughter started putting plastic bags on her Nissan truck’s mirrors, Ms. Francis’s Subaru has mirrors that fold, she said.
“I thought that’s ridiculous,” she said of the plastic bags, “so I tried pushing it in.”
Forget about trying to get close to the woodpecker, she said.
“He’s off like a bullet,” said Ms. Francis, who has lived in her house for 48 years.
Devin Mock, 36, a longtime resident of the neighborhood, said he had been lucky and had not incurred the woodpecker’s wrath.
“A neighbor drove by and was like, ‘Is someone going around smashing mirrors?’ ” Mr. Mock said. “It’s this damn giant woodpecker.”
Not long after the woodpecker’s escapades started making headlines, residents said, members of the news media descended upon the neighborhood, hoping to catch a glimpse of the bird.
They had a better chance of hearing him, people in the neighborhood said, recalling how they have been waked up several times by the woodpecker at daybreak.
The woodpecker could not be reached for comment.
Ms. Francis said she was taking the chaos wrought by the bird in stride.
“Anything that makes you smile is worth it,” she said.
Ms. Favaloro said that she and her husband had replaced their broken mirrors themselves — no insurance adjuster or glass repair service was needed. The experience, she said, brought neighbors together.
And for her, there were no hard feelings toward the woodpecker.
“It’s hard to be mad at him,” she said.
Neil Vigdor covers breaking news for The Times, with a focus on politics.
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