Every spring I get at least one call about a "dumb" woodpecker making a racket by trying to pound insects out of a metal gutter. In the animal world, dumb actions tend to put one on the short list for extinction. Woodpeckers not only have various calls having different meanings but have a percussive language with very specific meanings.
If you listen carefully, you can become a pretty good interpreter as to which woodpecker (pileated, red-bellied, downy) is using its bill as an instrument for searching for insects or excavating a cavity for a nest hole. But in early spring male woodpeckers also use their beaks to declare territories and attract mates.
Suddenly the sound of beak on wood changes from irregular pecking to a long, regular drum roll: tat-tat-rrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr! It's so different from normal tapping on wood that this sound has a special name, "drumming." It has nothing to do with searching for insects. A male woodpecker is sending out a specific message, "I'm ready to accept visits from any available female within hearing to inspect my territory and become my mate for the season."
There's method to the madness of drumming. The male actually tries out various materials in his territory to find the surface that will best get his message out. The louder, the better. At the old Cooksey's Camping Resort on Anastasia Island I once watched a male red-bellied woodpecker fly to a telephone pole near where I sat eating lunch. He landed about four feet from the ground, drummed a short rrrrrrrrrrr and moved on, hitching himself a foot or two further up the pole, lightly drumming in short bursts. His movements caught my attention because he didn't linger over spots he tested with his beak. About two-thirds the way up, the woodpecker stopped at a metal plate attached to the pole and gave a short rrrrrrrr on the metal. Pleased with the results, the woodpecker spent five minutes drumming on various parts of the metal plate until he found the spot producing the most resonant sound. All afternoon he regularly returned to the same spot to broadcast his declaration on the metal plate.
What to do when your gutter is used to broadcast a woodpecker's advertisement for a mate? Hope your woodpecker has the most attractive territory in the neighborhood. As soon as he and a female get busy preparing a nesting cavity, drumming stops.