I didn’t catch the details, but there is a neighborhood whose residents were going to their cars in the morning to discover broken outside mirrors. Cops finally caught the culprits. Woodpeckers. It seems they were pecking at their own images hard enough to break the mirrors. One suggested solution was to put plastic bags over your mirrors when the car is in its driveway. I suppose another solution would be to repair a smashed mirror with the stick-on repair mirrors available in parts stores, the “cut to size” plastic mirrored surfaces with the adhesive back.
I think this came up a while back with someone wondering why there were bags on the mirrors of a car. A shotgun might solve the problem too. Just as an aside though, I’ve replaced a couple mirrors with an exact fit and from a place in Michigan. About $10, press fit, and look like the original. You could just stock a few at that price.
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Now that you mention it, I think I remember it having come up. It was just in the news again.
A shotgun might be hard on the mirror. 
As for that stick-on plastic mirror surface . . .
I’ve seen many examples, where it was a poor substitute for the real thing
Its cheap, you get what you pay for
All you gotta do is make some noise and the birds will fly off. If you want to shoot them, take them out while they are flying.
I like the bag idea, but I wonder how well it will work. We have woodpeckers in the forest out back. Occasionally they will land on the roof and peck the gutters. I’m sure they don’t see themselves reflected in the gutter.
The ones I’ve purchased have been excellent. I built a solid maple jewelry/music box for my granddaughter and bought some to line the inside so she could watch the music movement run. I wanted a mirror that didn’t have glass.
I also bought one to cut and use with my OBDII reader after stepping on and breaking some dollar store mirrors. I use it to see the connector under the dash, since I can’t bend over. While if used on rearview mirrors they might ultimately be subject to scratching over time, They’re great. But the ones I bought weren’t inexpensive. Perhaps there are different qualities out there?
I should add that if one has to replace the mirror ultimately anyway, what’s to lose? Besides, it’s just an idea for those who’ve had the problem.
Excellent work . . . ! 
You seem to be confirming what I suspected . . . the result is only as good as the effort you put in
And since you clearly put in a lot of effort, the results are excellent 
Nice work. My first woodworking project back in 1970 was a cedar chest for my future wife. I put in a jewelry tray with a music movement. Never thought about a mirror though. I’ve accumulated a lot better tools since then.
At any rate the replacement mirrors I have bought were glass and exact fit complete with the wording on them and exact matches for the originals. I’ve gotten more careful backing out of the garage now.
Pecking on the gutter serves a slightly different purpose. It’s meant to send a message to female woodpeckers in the area. Gutters work great because they resonate well and the sound carries. Pecking mirrors is trying to drive off competition…
You can buy a replacement mirror glass for not a lot of money. When I broke the side mirror glass on my Camry, I bought the replacement glass (comes with the proper adhesive and backing plate) for around $12. Not worth messing around IMO.
Huh? Apparently where you are the word “gutter” has an entirely different meaning than it does where I live. I’ve never heard it applied to a side mirror before.
Sincere thanks for the compliments guys. I’ve made everything in wood up to and including a Queen Anne Highboy with Cabriole legs (my masterpiece), but this being a car forum I mainly wanted to show how good the stick on mirrors are.
I thought the woodpecker I witnessed hammering a corrugated steel roof was simply retarded. Thank you for the explanation.
Yeah, I learned all this the hard way. I had them hammering away at the gutters at first light and wondering the same as you- WTH are they doing? Unfortunately, that was not the end of it, I had some rather large pileated woodpeckers decide that the soffits of my log home would make a good nest. Nice to come home to several 3" diameter holes pecked through the underside. I spent a bunch of time researching their behaviors before I managed to get them to move on without killing any but it took a lot of effort and persistence.
The post I responded to had this comment-
We have woodpeckers in the forest out back. Occasionally they will land on the roof and peck the gutters. I’m sure they don’t see themselves reflected in the gutter.
So I explained why they do that.
To the poster that said they were pecking on the gutters, be wary. Woodpeckers can hear insects boring into wood and they’ll peck through whatever they hear them under to try to get at them. Two years sago I had a redbellied woodpecker pecking at my eves and discovered I had carpenter bees building a nest in there. I went to BlueSeal, got some spray specifically made to kill carpenter bee nests, cleared them out, and the redbellied woodpeckers went elsewhere.
I once stayed at a campground where they warned us to cover our mirrors for this reason. I think it was in Georgia.
Thanks for the warning. None of those things are issues, though. We just had a new roof put on that included fixing damaged roof panels. They would have noticed anything and replaced those areas, too. It was an insurance job and the roofing company had no reason to hide anything from me. Again, I do appreciate your cautions.