Popcorn Park Helps Save Baby Woodpeckers After Their Mother Died

LACEY TOWNSHIP, NJ Thanks to the efforts of many, including Popcorn Park Managing Director John Bergmann, two tiny woodpeckers are alive and well after their mother was found dead on a West Creek deck recently.

Bergmann received a call from his friend Bill Hansen, who had been watching the mother bird build her nest in a tree near his West Creek home and rear her babies for some time. But one day he found the mother bird dead on his deck. His first thoughts were to check on her babies.

Hansen got a ladder and went up a tree to the nest to check on them. They were still in the nest and hungry, Bergmann said in a Facebook post.

"They eat all day long," he told Patch. "They eat a lot."

Hansen called Popcorn Park. The owner of Josh's Pet Agree Pets donated a variety of different size meal worms and waxworms. While Bergmann was getting the worms. Hansen had already begun feeding the fledglings peanut butter and water with a paint brush in their nest.

The little birds began eating the meal worms. The next step was to figure out how to get them out of the nest, Bergmann.

Hansen grabbed his hammer and chisel and began working to enlarge the nest hole.

"Right after the first sound of the hammer hitting the chisel the older baby (almost a fledgling) jumped out of the hole and fell to the ground, where we caught him," Bergmann said in the post.

They didn't hear anymore peeping from the nest, but wanted to make sure there weren't any other birds still inside. Unfortunately, both Bergmann and Hansens' hands were too big to reach inside and check.

So Bergmann called his daughter Emily, who lives close by and has smaller hands.

As she pulled in Hansen's driveway, the two men heard one more little peep.

"I put my hand as far in as I could and the baby woodpecker clung to it and walked up and out where I could reach him with my other hand," Bergmann said. "Emily went up the ladder next and easily fit her hand down to the bottom of the nest to make sure we had them all, and yes, we had."

They fed the two little birds more worms, and brought them over to Toms River Avian Care to be checked out.

The older baby, who had fallen from the tree, fractured the last joint on his right wing, he said.

But the fracture will easily heal and eventually the little one will be able to be safely released, Bermann wrote.

"We’re always there to help," he wrote. "You can help us do that by texting "Popcorn" to 501501 to make a $10.00 donation, or click here: https://www.ahscares.org/shop/item.as

Photos: Courtesy of John Bergmann