Bird Ally X stands with the Wiyot, opposes a wind farm on sacred land.

Posted on November 21, 2019December 18, 2019 by Monte Merrick

It’s really that simple. If the Wiyot do not want this project on their ancestral and sacred land, then it should not proceed.

Climate change, climate chaos, is a real and terrifying existential threat to our society. But to have a company from out of the area, a company which is deeply invested in climate destroying energy elsewhere, to try to hold us hostage using the threat of climate change as their leverage is a bully’s gambit.

How our land is lived on is a matter of local concern. How we arrive at decisions should obviously give serious weight to the opinions and knowledge of the people who are part of this land, to the people who have thousands of years of experience of living here sustainably.

No more really needs to be said.

Yet it’s also true that we oppose the wind farm because of the callous disregard of Terra-Gen for the wild lives who will be destroyed by its ordinary function. One of the few Bald Eagles that we treated at Humboldt Wildlife Care Center/bax was rescued in the Bear River Valley and released on Bear River Ridge. Bear River Ridge is a place of unsurpassed beauty and splendor and it is not ours to destroy so that skyscrapers might live.

Our annual Season’s Greeting, coming to your mailbox soon!

Posted on November 17, 2019December 2, 2019 by Monte Merrick

Dear Friends and Supporters,

As the winter skies return and we reflect on the past year, remembering our successes and our sorrows, we are reminded again of our singular and precious existence on this tilted world, slinging us through the wild universe and here on Earth we see the seasons. So regularly ordinary is it to be flung wild and free through a cosmos we’ll never fully grasp, that we might walk past a miracle here, a breathtaking moment of love and poetry there.

It’s a simple observable fact that the wild is boundless and there is no void. Each toehold, every crumb has someone to perch there, someone to feed. If we seek the wild we need look no further than the back of our own hands or the wild red blood cells who swim in our veins.

We can find the wild easily among the litter and chaos of any city street, where a family of Sparrows might be raising their babies, as was the case with the family of White crowned Sparrows on this card.

A fledgling bird separated from her family was found one morning in old town Eureka by a shopkeeper during a street festival. Unsure of what to do, they called us. The day was frantic with festival goers and we had no way of searching for the young bird’s family. So we took her back to our clinic, gave her an exam, made sure she was well hydrated. We offered her some food. The next day, an ordinary busy weekday, but without the festival crowd, we found her family and they found her.

The dunes, marshes and river bottoms of the Humboldt Bay Area have always been perfect habitat for White-crowned Sparrows, and though city-life has encroached on their world, still they make a good go of it in the nasturtium and shrubbery of our landscaping, a place we might be unlikely to call wild, the source of all good things.

Yet here we are – no matter how devastated, no matter how disrupted, no matter how desperate – we live as the Sparrows do, struggling and surviving, living by a wild code, whether we see it or not – as moved by universal forces as this wild family.

Thank you for making our work possible in 2019. We wish you a happy holiday season, and a fulfilling new year.

Thank you for your love of the Wild

All of us at Bird Ally X/Humboldt Wildlife Care Center

**If you’d like to support our work at this time, please** **DONATE HERE**

Short Winter Days Increase Traffic Hazards for Wildlife

Posted on November 16, 2019November 17, 2019 by Monte Merrick

Every year, as we turn the clocks back in Autumn, the evening commute for many takes place at dusk or in the dark. Unfortunately this creates a terrible hazard for nocturnal wild neighbors who are just beginning their workday.

Owls especially, it seems, are the victims of highways filled with cars after the sun goes down. Each Autumn our caseload has a sudden drastic increase in Owls hit by vehicles.

Two patients we’ve recently treated, a Barred Owl (Strix varia) and Northern Saw-whet Owl (Aegolius acadicus) were both hit by cars at the end of the day. Fortunately neither suffered life-ending injuries. They each came in dazed, confused and unable to stand or fly, but soon were recovering and back on their feet, and then back on the wing.

Hit by a car in Crescent City, this Barred Owl was bleeding from mouth and ears when first admitted. After several days in care, she was flying again, strong and agile.

In the early evenings of Autumn, it’s common for a misty fog to lay low across the river bottoms and lowlands, complicating visibility in waning daylight, with oncoming headlights making things worse. Yet the bottoms are prime hunting ground for all manner of nocturnal wild animals, from Owls to Raccoons and Skunks and Opossums.

It’s simply good manners to slow down and be vigilant, as we would in any neighborhood where pedestrian (or wing-borne) travelers are predictably present, crossing the highways as they must.

Northern Saw-whet Owl flies freely once more afer being hit by a car between Crescent City and Klamath.

Right after leaving the box, the tiny owl stopped to look around…

Every late Autumn and Winter we admit scores of wild neighbors who’ve been hit by vehicles. How many more are hit, killed, and never found we may never know… You can help reduce these numbers by keeping our wild neighbors in mind when driving. You can help support their care by supporting our work, keeping our doors open and our facility ready to care for Owls and others who are struck by vehicles, as well as all the wild patients we treat year-round.

Thank you for your love of the wild!

DONATE

all photos: Laura Corsiglia/bax