A young Green Heron fights city hall and wins!

Posted on September 3, 2019September 3, 2019 by Monte Merrick

Birds gotta fly and fish gotta swim! No one knows this more than birds and fish. And when a young Green Heron (Butorides virescens) has to fly, fly they must! If it’s the first flight ever, mistakes might be made….

Our Green Heron patient flying in the aviary.

When we got the call that a heron was running around the intersection of 7th and F in Arcata, we quickly drove over to investigate, finding nobody. As it turns out a citizen had already captured and delivered the bird to the Arcata City Hall.

One of the hallmarks of being wild is that no permits are required to live your life. You are free to do as you wish. So there’s no real reason for a heron to visit government offices. If a wild bird does visit, chances are good that something has gone awry.

An employee of the city called to say they’d bring us the bird. While we waited, we speculated that the bird may have been hit by a car, – an obvious guess since found in traffic and not flying away. But when the heron was brought to our clinic a couple of miles away in Bayside, we saw that this bird was a young fledgling, possibly on their first sortie from the nest.

A release evaluation is exactly like an admission exam, but instead of looking for problems, we’re looking for resolution.

Green Herons aren’t endangered, but still they are very uncommon patient at HWCC/bax. We’ve treated 6 individuals over the last 8 years.

Unlike Great Egrets, Great Blue Herons and Black-crowned Night Herons, Green Herons are, in ornithological jargon, “secretive”. You could spend days at the marsh and never see the family of Green Herons who are just beyond your grasp.

Wetlands such as marshes and estuaries are prime habitat for these birds. As wetlands are under increasing attack, so are Green Heron populations in steep decline. Preserving their habitat is key to preserving their lives and existence.

In the case of this young bird, our first concern was getting the youngster back to their family. Less than a quarter mile from Arcata City Hall is a small wetland that seemed the likely location of the Green Heron family nest. In fact, we were informed by a reliable observer that a Green Heron nest had been active in a conifer very close to the nearby Arcata Community Center.

Within a day we had a team out looking for the family. We found the nest, but no birds were spotted. We knew that it was still likely that they were near, but without a confirmed sighting the risk was too great to simply leave the young Heron at the wetland and hope for the best. At this age, the bird would still be relying on food given by their parents.

With no family found, it would be up to us to provide the fledgling with opportunities to learn to forage as well as strengthen flight skills.

A simple kiddie pool can quickly be converted into a fish catching training ground. By mixing live and dead fish in this small pool, our young patient was soon catching and eating live fish like a champ!

Fledgling birds are typically as big if not bigger in weight than adults, so our patient no longer needed to grow, only learn. We provided a pool with live fish fso the Heron could learn to hunt, an aviary big enough for improving flight, and perches and grasses so that the heron’s inherited desire to hide could be satisfied.

After three weeks, the young bird was eating all the fish we offered and had lost the last of the downy nestling feathers. All that was left was release.

We released the Green Heron into excellent habitat not far from the original nest site. It’s quite possible that the bird’s parents and siblings had moved here too. In either case we were certain this bird was ready to be on their own.

In case the reason for their name was a mystery: Green Heron!

Deep inside this thicket, lurks a strange and mysterious force, the Green Heron case #781.

Cropping the image reveals the birds “secret” location.

The Green Heron is somewhere in there, maybe never to be seen by human eyes again.

This young Heron was one of over 900 animals we’ve admitted for care, year to date. Your support paid for the fish the heron ate, the warmth the heron needed on the first night of care, the phone that received the call, the gasoline used to search for their family, and to transport to the release location, and our Bayside facility itself. Without any of these things, this bird wouldn’t be out there right now, wild, free, and able to survive.

2019 is a challenging year. Our caseload is up nearly 5% over last year. We’ve already admitted as many patients this year as we admitted in all of 2013. We need your help! We had a 2019 fundraising goal of $100,000 by August 31. We’re $40,000 short of that goal. We don’t expect to make up the difference, but with your help we can pay our bills from the crazy summer and prepare for the remaining months and the 300-400 more patients we are likely to admit before the year is over. Please help. Thank you!

Donate here to help injured and orphaned wild animals.

photos: Laura Corsiglia/BAX

Black Phoebe Fledgling Home Again!

Posted on May 5, 2015May 6, 2015 by Monte Merrick

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Spring is in full swing now and wild babies are showing up in the world, getting found by kids, cats, dogs, and other suburban challenges!

Last week, a youg Black Phoebe, fresh from the nest, was found by students on the ground at East High, an alternative high school in Fortuna. Brought to our clinic, we quickly determined that the young bird was a fledgling, not injured. Although songbirds live among us, closer than almost any other wild animals, many people remain unaware that fledgling birds often spend up to a week not quite ready to fly, but more than ready to jump form the nest. This is a very vulnerable time for these little guys, but it’s a time that every adult bird you see has passed through. Of course our modern world, with housecats, dogs, and cars lurking behind every moment, presents some dangers that natural life on Earth doesn’t, but still the best place for a fledgling bird is with her or his parents.

After giving this Phoebe an exam and some food, we started to arrange for the best possible plan – reuniting the family.

Black Phoebe eating mealworms while in our care ……….. (video BAX/Lucinda Adamson)

Two days later, we took the little Phoebe back to Fortuna, back to the exact location where s/he was found. Adult Black Phoebes were flying all over the area. A hole in the wall of an outbuilding appeared to have a Phoebe nest. Our staff placed the young bird as close to the nest as possible, off the ground and hopefully out of danger.

Black Phoebe adults in flight – are these our guy’s parents? (BAX/Laura Corsiglia)

The young Phoebe sits waiting for parents. (BAX/Laura Corsiglia)

Soon the youngster made a short flight to the roof of the building. Almost immediately an adult approached. Success! Soon the fledgling’s parents were bringing food. We stayed to make sure that all was well and then left this wild family to their own world, right out in the open, in the middle of our world, yet so mysterious!

Thank you for supporting our work! Your donation goes directly to our efforts to provide care for injured and orphaned wild animals, and to promoting co-existence with all of our wild neighbors. Please share our work, and if you can, donate today!

All photos (BAX/Laura Corsiglia)

Two gulls together.

Posted on September 3, 2014 by Monte Merrick

Two Western gulls, one adult and one who’d hatched this year, were in care for most of July and August. If life hadn’t thrown each of them a curve ball they may have never met.

Thank you everyone, our August fundraising drive is over! But it’s not too late to help push us over $5000. Your donation goes directly to the Rescue and Rehabilitation of the North Coast’s injured and orphaned wild animals as well as humane solutions to keep wild families together and the use non-lethal methods to resolve human/wildlife conflicts. Thank you for donating today!

As they come out of the box, a brown/gray juvenile Western Gull meets beach sand for the first time while a white adult scrambles toward freedom.

The young bird was found on a rock off the coast of Crescent City. Typically, this would be where you might find a gull fresh from the egg. Western Gulls rear their young on the seastacks and remote headlands all along the California coast. Less than two weeks old, the bird still had hatchling feathers. We offered him fish and safety and as soon as s/he began to fly, the company of other gulls.

The adorable nature of hatchling gulls can sometimes test the resolve of professional caregivers. “Please can I keep him?” says the smitten rehabilitator. “No!” says Mother Earth, and she quotes Henry David Thoreau, “All good things are wild and free!”

Four weeks after the hatchling Gull was admitted, an adult Western Gull was brought to our clinic who was unable to fly. Upon admission we discovered the bird’s right ulna was fractured near the wrist. As with our arms, the wings of all birds have a shoulder, a humerus between shoulder and elbow, and from elbow to wrist, two bones in parallel, the radius and the ulna.

If you have to break a wing, this sort of fracture is among the easiest to treat. The uninjured radius serves as the perfect splint to stabilize its partner, the ulna, while it heals. The fracture being close to the wrist did cause some concern, but the chances for a full recovery seemed good. We immobilized the wing and checked its progress periodically.

One of the remarkable things about birds compared to mammals is the speed that they heal – a broken bone in a mammal can take 6 weeks or longer to mend, while most fractures in birds are stable after 12-14 days! This gull was no different and after 13 days the break had healed and the stabilizing wrap was removed.

In our aviary, wing fractured healed, the adult Western Gull shows off some skills.

At this same time, the young Gull, fully grown, with flight feathers in (no more cute spots!) was ready to be housed with the adult birds in care. While the adult re-conditioned for flight, the fledgling was discovering flight for the first time.

While trying to catch the adult for an examination, the youngster insisted on being included.

Within two weeks, the youngster was following the adult around the aviary, mimicking flight and asking to be fed, and the adult was flying with grace and agility, as a gull should.

Releasing a young orphaned bird is a challenge. Although our young patient was able to recognize appropriate food and forage independently, it is still preferable that young birds have adult guidance. Now that our adult patient was fully recovered, it was a fortunate coincidence that we were able to send our youngster out into wild freedom with an older bird.

The adult sprang from the carrier into flight and never looked back…

Circling the area after release, the young Western Gull demonstrates his flight skills.

We took both Gulls down to North Jetty on the Samoa peninsula. The adult burst from the carrier and off across the water. Meanwhile the young Gull took some time to become acquainted with freedom. Soon anothe youngster came by and eventually both took off together – free, wild and at the beginning of a hopefully long career.

Beautiful new feathers holding up a beautiful new bird.

A colleague is discovered.

Our former patient with a new friend explore the possibilities of endless wild freedom!

Your support makes success stories like these possible and gives injured and orphaned wild animals a much deserved second chance. Thank you for being a part of this life-saving work.

Thank you for your donation.

(all photos: Laura Corsiglia/Bird Ally X)