Since 1979, HWCC has tried to provide excellent care for our region’s orphaned Mule Deer fawns. This year, thanks to your support and our volunteers’ efforts, including an incredibel work day put in by local members of the US Coast Guard! Watch the video for our report on our progress!
We have more to go, more to build to regain our lost capacity after last year’s move. Your support will make it all happen. Please help us help our wild neighbors!! Thank you!!!
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Reading a draft of an essay on ethics for our profession.
Dear Friends and Supporters
Season’s Greetings! It’s hard to believe we’ve made it another year! After moving all of our operations to our undeveloped new property in March, the challenges were looming. The prospect of treating the 800 or so wild babies we admit each year in a completely unprepared facility was daunting. With your support however, we quickly got a workable pool for seabird orphans, an aviary for songbirds, other outdoor housing that we made work for everyone from Mallard ducklings to Pelicans and even a Gray Squirrel!
In the end, it was a season full of joys and successes! We treated and released dozens of baby Swallows – Barn Swallows, Cliff Swallows and Violet-Green Swallows – and we treated nearly 200 orphaned Opossum babies! 13 Raccoons! Over a dozen Striped Skunk kits and over a dozen Mallard ducklings too! We brought safe and humane resolutions to dozens of human-wildlife conflicts, keeping wild families together and protecting people’s homes! We even managed to take in the deer fawns from the Redding/Shasta area when the facility there became unavailable.
Ahead, in the Winter months, we’ll rebuild more of our capacity. We have support from the Oiled Wildlife Care Network to build three large seabird pools, we’ll soon finish the raccoon housing we started this Summer – an aviary for ducks, geese and herons will be started soon… Funding issues are forever – we’ll ask for your help again and again. Our community’s support has been awesome. Without you 2023 would’ve been a disaster! Instead it was the first year in our bold new era of independence and sustainability! Thank you!
As we enter the Winter months, with a to-do list that is exciting and challenging, we’ll continue to build a wildlife care facility that is as good as our Wild Neighbors deserve. I hope that 2024 brings all of us, near and far, the peace and prosperity that will help get the hard work done. Thank you for your support across the year, and the ages.
You make it all possible! May you have a joyful Holiday Season and a Happy New Year!
With deep gratitude
Monte Merrick, director HWCC/bax
About a month ago our resources to get through the Summer began to dwindle, getting dangerously low… ordinarily the support receive each day, each week, each month, gets us through – it’s a shoestring existence, and hand to mouth, but we get it done. Somehow, we get it done – the support makes a difference and we carry on, meeting the challneges of our mission.
This year is another story. First, we are in the middle of rebuilding our facility, as everyine I’m sure is tired of hearing about. But also we are treating the same number of patients as ever – we’re at nearly 1000 admissions for 2023! And our resources are at rock bottom! We cannot go on like this. Please help.
Your support goes directly to the care of injured and orphaned wildlife, from Mendocino to Oregon, from Weaverville to the Pacific Ocean. Our responsibility is enormous and your help is the only thing that will keep us going!
If you can donate anything, now, please do so! Your online contribution will be in our account within a few days! We need your help now. Thank you!!!
We’ve started building our raccoon housing at our new site, but it’s Summer and our resources are thin! We need your help! Please donate to help us develop our new facility and keep our patients fed – we have nearly 75 orphans in care! Thank you for keeping our doors open and always striving to improve!!!!
Wild Baby Season of 2023 is nearly halfway through as we continue to build our vessel as we sail it. We need your help! Help us feed 10 Fawns, 15 Swallows, 3 Owls, 10 Mallards, 5 Skunks, 10 Raccoons, a Gray Fox and more! Please support our work if you can!
Just finished on Saturday, already has 3 patients making use of it on Sunday! And we need so much more!
Please help! Your support has gotten us this far, thank you! And we still have a long way to go!
video shot/edited by Laura Corsiglia
A small bird with a big belly, covered in short blue-gray feathers with hardly a tail to speak of, a pair of big eyes and an impressive pinkish mouth, with a really splendid gravelly voice – this young Steller’s Jay (Cyanocitta stelleri) was found alone on the ground in an alley in Eureka and picked up by a kind member of the public.
Upon examination at our clinic, the little Jay was found to be in good health with no injuries. The only thing we were concerned about was the welfare of the family. The rescuer had wondered if the parents had been killed. The best thing to do would be to return to the site and look for the baby’s family, and if possible, attempt to reunite them with their parents. If no parents were found, the baby would come back to HWCC to be raised as an orphan until they could take care of themselves in the wild.
Like most parents, Steller’s Jays don’t abandon their babies. But tragedy can occur in a world full of cars, cats, windows, and natural predators – we treat nearly 200 orphaned songbirds each year!
We followed the address deep into Eureka, armed with binoculars and carrying the baby in a box lined with a soft pillowcase. We arrived at the site and proceeded to watch for Jays.
It’s awesome that this Jay’s mother and father were still present and that the youngster could return to their family. Of course, many young birds are actually orphaned and do need our care. While you can read on the internet that intervention may be the wrong thing, and that if you don’t know, you shouldn’t act, we can easily turn this reasoning around. In many cases we might not know enough to not act. To decide to do nothing might have consigned this wild animal to a needless death. The kind-hearted people who brought us the baby Jay were not able to tell that the baby wasn’t alone. They observed for a considerable time but didn’t see anything to allay their fears. This is perfectly fine! They aren’t professionals. They did the right thing. They called our clinic and told us what they’d seen. WIth no parents observed and the bird in the middle of an alley, with possible injuries, we suggested that they bring the baby to us. In this way we all played our part in helping protect this bird and gave them a second chance.
Want to help us provide the kind of care and attention that all wild neighbors in need deserve? Please consider donating! Your generosity is what makes our work possible. Without you there would be no one to call, no one to intervene, and no one to make sure that fledglings who’ve wandered far from home will get the attention and care they deserve. Thank you!!!
A video of a recent day at our new facility in Manila!
You can help us stay afloat!! Please donate to help us rebuild, and most importantly, care for the hundreds of wild orphans that are coming our way no matter what! WE NEED YOUR SUPPORT!
Thank you!!
video shot by Monte Merrick and Laura Corsilgia, edited by Soro Cyrene and Laura. (thanks Soro!!!)
