Month: September 2025
Red-throated Loon Released!
This Red-throated Loon (Gavia stellata) got a second chance because your support keeps our seabird pools functioning and our doors open to the many faces of the Wild who call our region home in their hour of need. Thank you.
Please support our work if you can.
Orphaned Cedar Waxwings Released!
After several days of eating berries from branches and no longer being fed by care providers, it was time to release the young Waxwings! Fortunately Arcata is filled with Cedar Waxwings and Berries at this time of year (late September) so releasing them was a cinch!
Without your support, none of this would be possible. Please donate if you can. Every little bit helps!
A rare, but regular, patient: Leach’s Storm Petrel Released
A Storm-petrel is not a bird that you will automatically see just because you signed up for 3 score and ten on good old Mother Earth. Smaller than an American Robin (Turdus migratorius) but spending all of their lives at sea, Leach’s Storm-petrels (Hydrobates leucorhous), the tiny cousins of Albatross, Fulmars, Shearwaters and other tubenoses (Procellariiformes) are infrequently observed, yet at Humboldt Wildlife Care Center we admit one or two every year, and in 2019 and 2024 we admitted dozens after bad ocean conditions brought many ashore.
At the end of the August, this little giant rode a fishing vessel back into port at Crescent City. Volunteers drove the storm-petrel down to our facility in Manila. After a few days enjoying our saltwater pool, they were in good shape, ready to get back to sea. We release these birds at the end of the day, because their small size makes them easy prey close to shore where gulls hunt for dinner. While we don’t begrudge gulls the right to eat, we prefer to not see our patients munched on as they re-orient themselves to their new condition of freedom.
Your support makes it possible for us to serve an enormous region that extends from Northern Mendocino County to Southern Oregon and from Weaverville to the middle of the Sea! Thank you for keeping our doors open! And if you can, please support us now, as we wind up our busy season and prepare for the wintering seabirds who are surely on their way!
Orphaned Cedar Waxwings Last Feeding of the Day [video]
These three Cedar Waxwings (Bombycilla cedrorum) are a joy to care for, and the reward is incredible. But we cannot pay our bills with our happiness and fulfillment, though that would be incredibly useful if we could considering how rich in those things we are. However, there is a solution! You! Your support makes this work possible. Please donate if you can.
Big Day!!! Six releases and a Visit from the OWCN!
A Really Big Day at Humboldt Wildlife Care Center/bird ally x!!!
Thanks to the Oiled Wildlife Care Network, for over thirty years of responding to wildlife injured and displaced by oil spills!
Thanks for coming to see us! In the video I failed to adequately acknowledge the people who came to visit! Rats! But we’ll take care of it here: Victoria Hall, the new Director, Frankie Lill, wildlife planning specialist (and haiku enthusiast!), Danny Vickers, wildlife planning specialist, and Wendy Massey, a friend and colleague I’ve known since my first oil spill response, 23 years ago, then called the San Mateo Mystery Spills, now known as the Luckenbach spills, from the sunken (1953) SS Jacob Luckenbach.
Your support is makes us able to be a part of this incredible network of care providers ready to jump into action for oil spill-impacted wild animals. And right now, at the end of Summer, and our very busy season, we need you to keep us even keeled and underway! Thank you for your past current and future support!
CODE RED!!!
At the End of the Day
A quick video made at day’s end, the beginning of September, reflecting on our current state and our needs….
Your support makes everything we do possible. We need you. Thank you
September Morn with Barn Swallows in Care [VIDEO+]
Look! A soundtrack!
First feeding of the morning, 7:45 am.
Your support means everything. We’ve already treated, cared for, raised and released 25 Swallows in 2025 (Barn, Violet-green, Cliff; family, Hirundinidae) and these 5 Barn Swallows still in care will most likely be the last Swallow babies of the year. Just in staff time alone, these babies are dear, but they’re dearness is most reliably measured in the joy they express in flight. At the end of Summer, we’re running on fumes. We need you. Please help.
