"We have a vandal in the neighborhood," Rockport, Massachusetts resident Janelle Favaloro warned in a Facebook post. "He was described as 18 to 24 inches tall, wearing black and white with a red hat." A pileated woodpecker has been attacking car mirrors and windows in the town for more than a month, ABC News reports. Favaloro says at least 20 vehicles have been damaged. Experts believe the damage was caused by a single bird—a male with elevated levels of testosterone at the start of breeding season.
Woodpeckers are establishing their territories at this time of year, and "when they see their reflection in a mirror, they don't see it as themselves," John Herbert, director of bird conservation with Mass Audubon, tells NPR. "They see it as another woodpecker." Matthew Fuxjager, an animal behavior expert at Brown University, tells the New York Times that pileated woodpeckers, the largest woodpeckers in North America, are notoriously territorial—and powerful. "They're a ferocious bird, and they're really strong," he says, calling their peck "the biomechanical equivalent of a hammer."
Residents of Rockport's Squam Hill neighborhood, which is next to a conservation area, have been folding in their car mirrors or wrapping them in bags or towels, the Times reports. Favaloro says the woodpecker has damaged two of her family's vehicles but they replaced the broken mirrors themselves and it's "hard to be mad" at the bird. "It's turned into such a nice thing for the neighborhood, because it's getting neighbors to talk to each other, and it's a nice break from politics and the stock market and Karen Read and everyone being awful to each other," she tells the Boston Globe. (More woodpeckers stories.)