Fixing woodpecker holes in my house

Damn woodpeckers.For some reason they found my house tasty. We don't have any bugs or larve in the cedar siding, but they still like pecking my house. From what I hear they also peck to make noise to attract mates. I guess we have some randy birds around.That being said I have to fix the holes for two reasons:

1. Having holes in the house is a Bad Thing
2. The birds are stupid -- if you fix the holes they don't know where they've been and might change where they peck.

I went up to see how big the holes are: just about two inches. They are far too big to putty. The only choice I had was to replace the wood or otherwise cover the holes.I did both for different reasons.The easy ones I drilled a two-inch hole and hammered in a piece of a two-inch dowel. The hard hole which was on a corner I just covered with some aluminum flashing since I didn't want to deal with replacing boards under the gutters.Here's the materials I used for the drill and fill:You can buy almost all of that from a store; one thing you need to make. Of course I had to find out the hard way up front.The key to this is the part with the hole in it: the jig. If you try to drill a hole free-hand with the hole saw you'll wander all over the place. The drill bit in the middle is what holds you steady when you're going into a solid chunk of wood, but when your trying to square off an existing hole, it's rough going.All you need to do is grab some scrap wood and use the hole saw to make a nice hole. Then drive in a few nails (I drilled pilot holes to avoid splitting the wood). You've made a jig! To use it just position the jig where you want the hole and tack it on with a hammer. Now the jig will hold the hole saw steady; instead of holding it steady from the inside bit, you have a fence on the outside. As an added bonus it's really easy to see what you're taking out.At this point all you need to do is drill out the hole and plug it with chunk of the two-inch dowel. Use a bit of glue and you'll be good to go!All that's left is finishing. You'll want to use a bit of wood putty to smooth things out and some paint to match the rest of the house!For the hole on the corner of the house I just patched it with some aluminium flashing. I squeezed some caulk onto it and nailed it up on the house. Some primer and paint and you can't even see it unless you look hard![smugmug url="http://photos.vec.com/hack/feed.mg?Type=gallery&Data=14012378_CF32E&format=rss200" imagecount="100" start="1" num="100" thumbsize="Th" link="lightbox" captions="false" sort="false" window="true" smugmug="true" size="L"]