Looks like a colorful crow.
Common Grackle Identification, All About Birds, Cornell Lab of Ornithology
Common Grackles are blackbirds that look like they've been slightly stretched. They're taller and longer tailed than a typical blackbird, with a longer, more tapered bill and glossy-iridescent bodies. Grackles walk around lawns and fields on their long legs or gather in noisy groups high in...www.allaboutbirds.org
Probably Termites.
termites aren't much an issue in Utah.
The house we moved from was a Territorial/Spanish style home with lodge poles in place of 4x4's. The wood peckers tore those up pretty bad.
Growing up in SoCal with a college buddy whose parents lived in Big Bear (near Boulder Bay), we were well acquainted with flickers. They like flashing also (sorta a type of woodpecker)As long as we are talking woodpeckers something interesting has been happening in my area.
Now I grew up here, I live three blocks from the hospital I was born in and see it from my bedroom window, so I have a pretty good idea of what species have been around. Well over the last year or so woodpeckers have shown up. It started with just the occasional sound of their pecking. But these guys must be rather prolific breeders because these days it's quite common.
Now before someone asks how a kid who grew up on the beach would know what a woodpecker sounds like, I'll tell you. Growing up my family had a cabin in Big Bear in the local mountains. I spent most of my summers not to mention holidays and other odd weekends there in other seasons (took my first deer on the other side of the lake near Fawnskin). Those mountain have lots of woodpeckers.
A few neighbors were amazed when I told them what they were hearing. I just told them it's just one of the terrible results of global change.
Our was on Moon Ridge. Long before streets were paved and the now multimillion dollar "cabins" were built. Interestingly I remember we had running water, propane and a septic tank. But in my earliest memories we didn't have electricity. A small one room (if you don't count the bath), and a loft for four kids. Heck with friends there were often four adults and upwards of 7 or 8 kids. Best darned summers of my life, bar none.
Talk about fun!
