‘Not everyone stops to think’

A recent severe storm in Minnesota did irreparable damage to many homes — including the lodgings of a family of woodpeckers. But in a bit of good news, community service officers and animal care staff were able to save the four babies, CBS reported.

After the intense weather knocked their nesting tree down, residents heard the tiny birds crying from inside. Concerned, they called community service officers with the Centennial Lakes police, who promptly attended the call.

“How cool is this! Our community service officers were called to a residence in Lexington for a downed tree that had baby woodpeckers in it,” the police department wrote in a Facebook post documenting the rescue. In their photos, the branch containing the nest has been carefully sawed off and placed in the back of a police car.

From there, officers transported the nest to the nearby Roseville Wildlife Rehabilitation Center, where staff used more delicate extraction to remove all four baby woodpeckers safely and soundly.

“Not everybody stops to think if there’s wildlife in these downed trees and branches,” CBS quoted Brittney Yohannes, communications and development director at the WRC. “Luckily woodpeckers are pretty noisy.”

She said that the center rehabilitates approximately 200 woodpeckers a year — as well as other types of birds — many of which are injured from trees toppling in storms.

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And while storms have been a regular occurrence in summer for many decades, they’re becoming increasingly more intense, a phenomenon that many scientists have linked to global overheating.

According to the Environmental Protection Agency, soaring global temperatures have been correlated with increasing extreme precipitation, intense tropical storms, and increased flooding among other patterns.

Fortunately, with the vigilance of the community and the prompt attention of both the police and the WRC team, it was a happy ending for these four babies. Only a few weeks old and hardly more than balls of fluff, they’re now happily nesting in an incubator, where they’re being monitored by staff and fed every 20 minutes.

Yohannes explained that the babies will likely have to spend anywhere from several weeks to several months with WRC before they’ll be strong enough to return to the wild.

“Getting to release these guys is such a special moment for all of the members of our team,” she said.

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