Have You Seen This? Trapped woodpecker flies into woman's hands

NOVOSIBIRSK, Russia — Maybe it was good hand-eye coordination. More likely, it was just a fluke.

Whatever it was, a Russian woman caught a flying woodpecker trapped inside a garage with her bare hands and carried it outside to freedom.

"What a catch!" gushed Accuweather, which posted the video on its YouTube page.

The incident occurred in Novosibirsk, Russia, seemingly in an auto-detailing shop. Neither the original post nor the Accuweather post offer much backstory, but it appears the bird flew into the garage, and as those inside tried to get it out, it flew into the hands of the young woman, Zhenya, who had motioned for it to come toward her.

She looks surprised, and the person filming laughs as if stunned by the turn of events. Zhenya walks out of the garage, opens her hands and the bird flies off into the sky.

"A new friend flew in today," the original poster, Alexandra Grechko, wrote in her account of the incident earlier this week on Instagram, translated from Russian to English by Google Translate. "The woodpecker is scared — he's yelling at Zhenya. Zhenya is scared that the woodpecker is yelling at her. Day in review — Zhenya is a good bird catcher."

Many commenters on the original post expressed surprise.

"What kind of Disney princess is this? Did you see how the woodpecker obediently flew to her?" wrote one.

The video also sparked debate on Reddit, with one person suggesting it might be AI-generated in part because the woman who caught the bird is "too pretty." Others noted the erratic behavior of birds trapped in a closed space.

"They will dive bomb or bluff attack, and it looked like that to me. Even if there is a huge way out of that space, birds will freak out and not be able to comprehend that, even if it is how they got in," wrote another poster on the Reddit feed.

Have You Seen This? Trapped woodpecker flies into woman's hands

Posted - Oct. 16, 2026 at 3:29 p.m.

A woodpecker trapped inside a garage in Russia flew into the hands of a woman trying to help it. She caught it and carried the bird outside to freedom. (Accuweather via YouTube)