Tag: freedom

Recovery and Freeedom! The Pandemic Year: part three

Posted on by Monte Merrick

We’ve fallen behind in reporting on our hectic Summer season, due in part to the global coronavirus pandemic, and also to our sudden huge increase in patients over previous Summers. So let us take a breath, slip away from the clinic and our never-ending tasks and catch you up with some of our cases and releases from over the hectic baby season. Here’s a little tune to accompany you.

Three of the six young Gray Foxes (Urocyon cinereoargenteus) we provided care for at Humboldt Wildlfie Care Center, Summer 2020.
A young fox surveys their freedom after release.
Orphaned Gray Fox at release performs the title song from the smash hit Broadway musical, Into the Woods. No Zoom app required.
Two nestling Great Blue Herons (Ardea herodias), blown from their tree during a late Spring wind storm, get the hang of eating human caregiver delivered fish.
In the early days of the Herons’ care we offered their fish on long hemostats. Quickly they began picking up their fish all by themselves. Soon after that they were hunting live fish in a pool.
Launching into flight at the release site, just south of the Hoopa Reservation, where the two Herons came from. Covid 19 restrictions kept us from taking them all the way home, so a few miles from home would have to suffice.
Great Blue Heron puts a lot of distance between themself and the humans who tried their best to provide good care. We did our jobs. But the stench of humanity still lingers…
Caspian Tern (Hydroprogne caspia) in care: This Tern was found struggling in the surf. Without any injuries and in good body condition, we presumed the problem was an accidental dunking. After a few days of fish and rest, this bird who barks like a cat was raring to go!
Released back to Humboldt Bay, where a large colony of Caspian Terns raise their young every year, this beautiful bird was one good tern…
As the saying goes, one good Tern photo deserves another.
Each year mother Mallards (Anas platyrhynchos) make their nests near Humboldt Bay and other bodies of water and every year when they lead their precocial babies to that water they have to cross roads. Mayhem ensues. Of the 24 orphaned Mallards we treated this year, 16 of them were found on the highway with their dead mother. Caring for Mallard babies until they can be released is a privilege, but returning them to the wild that is a lustrous green carpet of duckeed is one of life’s marvels.
The Arcata Marsh, home to many ducks and aquatic birds, is rich with nutritious and natural duck food.
Nature is perfect.
A juvenile Brown Pelican (Pelecanus occidentalis), very thin and full of lice was admitted this Summer after she turned up on a farm in Arcata (very out of place). Here she is being checked out after 27 days in care. A release exam is given to all our patients before we return them to their wild freedom. Dylan says that ‘to live outside the law you must be honest’ – well, maybe so, but you also must be as fit as a fiddle.
In our Pelican Aviary, this 3 months old female is flying well again!
After being found in a field with dairy cows in the Arcata Bottoms, our former patient is ready for a world of flight, salt water, diving and the company of her kind.

There is no getting around that 2020 has been a very difficult year, for our clinic, for our staff, for our community, for our nation, for the world. Yet, in these really difficult days, we’ve treated, as of this writing, September 10, 1,227 patients. Right now we’ve treated 300 more patients, year to date, in our small hospital on Humboldt Bay than any year in our 41 year history.

In March, as the pandemic was first hitting, it seemed entirely possible that our mission would be crushed under the weight of so much turmoil and uncertainty. It seemed possible that we wouldn’t make it through the Summer. But in fact, we’ve not only kept our doors open, we’ve managed to handle thousands of phone calls that often are better than the hands-on care we provide since these consultations and house calls prevent injuries and keep wild families together. We’ve learned as we went along how to do our work with a skeleton crew and with a shoestring budget. We’ve learned how to communicate effectively, how to keep our cool, how to appreciate the beauty and humor of life without seeing each other’s smiles or laughter. And none of this would have been possible without your support.

By the end of this month we will have treated more patients at HWCC than any previous year and we’ll still have three months to go. We have no idea how disastrous the rest of the year might be, or if we’ll ever return to what used to be normal. But as we’ve all been learning, we’ll keep on keeping on. Our wild neighbors will continue to have a place where they can be treated, cared for, and when possible, released back to their wild freedom. This is our commitment and promise and with your continued support we’ll keep it.

Thank you for making our work possible.

DONATE HERE

photos: Laura Corsiglia/bird ally x

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When the door is open, freedom is restored.

Posted on by Monte Merrick

If you follow wildlife rehabilitation on social media or other locations you might see all kinds of release techniques. From throwing eagles into the air to tipping over a box and dumping its passenger out. At Humboldt Wildlife Care Center, we take a different approach. After selecting a release location as near to the patient’s original rescue location as prudent or possible, we set the transport vessel down, open the lid or door to an unobstructed avenue of escape and step back. At this moment, our patient ceases to be our patient. They are released from care and all the decision-making about their destiny is restored to them and their true autonomy. In other words, they leave the box when they are good and ready.

We waited for six minutes for this young female Striped Skunk (Mephitis mephitis) to emerge from her carrier and re-enter the dune world a few hundred feet from where she was first found, a few days before trapped in an outbuilding in Fairhaven. Uninjured, we took her back to a nearby location to release her. Six minutes is a long time when you’re stuck in traffic, but it’s nothing when you’re returning a wild neighbor to her home.BAX staff carefully places the carrier down so that our skunk patient can exit with ease once the lid is open.

So we patiently waited for our former patient to emerge, with one check to make sure that she is okay and not tangled in the bedding that’s also in the box. Eventually our young patient steps out of the box of her own free will (she begins to leave the box at 5:48) and then quickly makes her way to cover and then (out of view of the camera) up and over the dune along a trail that the we hadn’t noticed before she used it.

Rescuing wild animals who are injured, orphaned or  otherwise caught in one of the myriad traps our human-built world has created, providing appropriate treatment, and releasing those who fully recover back to their wild and free lives is how we spend every single day of the year at HWCC/bax. But not without your support. We are in the middle of crucial fundraiser right now to help recover the costs of our incredibly busy year. We need to raise $10,000 by the end of October, in order to pay our rent and other critical bills! As of the 15th we aren’t even halfway there, which is cuaseing us some concern! Please help if you can! Donate today! Every little bit helps!

photos/video: Bird Ally X/Lucinda Adamson

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Ring-Billed Gull Beats the Parking Lot

Posted on by Monte Merrick

Every year Humboldt Wildlife Care Center admits nearly 100 gulls of various species. Many of these gulls are injured beyond all help but a humane end to their suffering. The most common causes of injuries to gulls are trucks and cars, and the most dangerous place, it seems, are the parking lots of area shopping centers.

It seems strange that parking lots would be the most dangerous, since traffic in lots is already very slow, the presence of children and people pushing carts would make driver’s more aware and able to avoid collisions with gulls and other birds. Of course, we’ve all witnessed the sad fact of young men trying to run down pigeons and gulls in parking lots with their vehicles. Purposefully trying to hit wild animals with a vehicle is an act of senseless cruelty and a troubling sign. While we don’t know if many of the gulls we treat suffered intentional cruelty, whenever we admit an animal found in a parking lot, we wonder even if we’ll never know. What we do know is that a large number of those gulls don’t make it.

A few days ago, however, we admitted a Ring-Billed Gull (Larus delawarensis) who’d been found on the ground, barely able to move, unable to stand in the parking lot for a shopping center on Broadway Avenue in Eureka. At first we were concerned that the gull had been hit hard enough to fracture his or her spine. But both feet were responsive to touch.

With no palpable fractures, we assumed either acute toxicity, or a collision that had cause swelling. Treated with fluids and anti-inflammatory medicine, the gull soon was standing again.

Recovery was fast. After a few days in our aviary, the gull was flying very well and ready for freedom. The following photos are in sequence from the today’s release. The gull leapt from the carrier and never touched the ground…

A nice way to end a challenging year! A gull’s second chance in a dangerous world!

Your support means that this gull, one of the last patients released in 2017, who would’ve died last week, vulnerable and wounded on an acre of pavement where people stash their cars while shopping for trinkets, an all too common fate, instead is flying above Humboldt Bay, free right now, using a second chance that your generosity provided. Our human-built world takes little heed of our wild neighbors. Your support helps fix that problem, case by case, one wild neighbor at a time.

Thank you for supporting our work in 2017. From all of us at HWCC/BAX Have a wonderful and safe New Year’s Eve and we’ll see you tomorrow, as we enter 2018 with an open door for our wild neighbors. Thank you.

photos: Bird Ally X/ Laura Corsiglia

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