With nearly 200 aquatic birds rescued in the avian botulism outbreak on the Lower Klamath Wildlife Refuge, to date 144 have been released. Currently there are 19 birds still in care at the BAX/USFWS field hospital. Since temperatures are supposed to dip below freezing this week, it is believed that the outbreak will soon be over. Your support covering our costs and providing treatment for those birds still in care is greatly appreciated. Please help us care for these and all of our patients! Thank you!
Mallards and others recover in pools that allow them to go in and out of water as they desire – an important step as they heal!
Each year we provide care and educational opportunities to several orphaned Northern Raccoon babies (Procyon lotor) – anywhere from a dozen to three dozen of the young, highly inquisitive, intelligent, and iconic mammals, depending on how well our outreach protecting denning mothers works.
This year we had great success helping people peacefully co-exist with neighborhood raccoons or humanely evict raccoon families from raccoon dens in crawl spaces and attics. Because of this success, we’ve admitted less than 20 raccoon babies this year. (to read about our other years, and learn more about our raccoon program check out all of our stories tagged Northern Raccoon)
The following photos our from our first group of raccoons released this year, after four months in care, learning as much about the wild world as they can in care. In these photos, taken by Laura Corsiglia, one our staff, Brooke Brown, releases three raccoons, two sisters and a male who was housed with them. It’s always a joy to see these bright young minds when they are first released into the blaze of reality.
HWCC staffperson, Brooke Brown opens the crates, letting our young patients greet the wild with no barriers between them since they lost their mothers months ago as tiny babies.Exploring the real Earth.These two sisters stick together through thick and thin, brave, resolute and with boundless curiosityThe rocks, rivers and forests of our region are the birthright of our patientsA portrait of a highly sophisticated Earthling.The two sisters cross the river and climb the opposite tangled bank into their private freedom…The male soon follows them….“It is interesting to contemplate a tangled bank, clothed with many plants of many kinds, with birds singing on the bushes, with various insects flitting about, and with worms crawling through the damp earth, and to reflect that these elaborately constructed forms, so different from each other, and dependent upon each other in so complex a manner, have all been produced by laws acting around us…” –Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species
Your support makes our work protecting the young of the wild possible. Please help us keep our doors open and our wild neighbors in need with the care they deserve. Thank you.
A young Western Gull (Larus occidentalis) chick, fallen from the platform above the bay where her parents had built their nest, stands on the rocky shore 70 feet from home. She walks along the edge of the water and rocks, stepping through a copious amount of dog shit, visible to the customers eating on the nearby seafood restaurant’s deck. Her parents circle above her calling a threat to any who would harm their baby, but their threats don’t carry much weight. This chick is in a tight spot. Like so many of us.
There is simply no way to avoid the fact that nestling gulls are absurdly adorable.
Nearly every day we have the opportunity to wonder if our actions are in step with our times. Easily, we can imagine that our efforts don’t strike at the heart of the matter. Children are in cages on our borders. Am I making a difference? I’m busy, but am I busy with the right things? Racist crimes are rising. For the first time in recorded history, there is no sea ice touching land in all of Alaska. The last thing I did today at work was give milk replacer to six tiny orphaned opossums, a late-season litter. None of them weigh more than 60 grams.
I think a lot of us must ask that question of ourselves daily. Why do we rescue and treat wild animals in the first place? It’s an easy answer: we see the need and the need must be filled. Yet, the world is burning. The temperature is rising. A whole living world is in jeopardy while psychotic gunmen are let loose in the commons. There’s no shortage of unfilled and unfillable need.
And yet, there is the gull chick at the water’s edge.
Among the hardest places to work, where things can go the most wrong, where simple rescues are made into treacherous crossings, are artificial breakwaters, made of granite rocks, tossed into the surf so that people can make more land. They call it riprap, as if these rocks were carved by the hand of Mother Earth herself and set just so in each mountain stream and along each industrial port so that our poets might have something to ponder. No. They’re ugly. And slimy. And each rock is almost stable. And if you slip and fall, you are going to get hurt. The only question is if you’ll still be able to walk on your twisted ankle. And if you successfully capture the gull chick, you go back across the rocks holding an injured and terrified patient as well.
Her wariness intact, the growing gull is losing her baby feathers.
I carried a long-handled net and worked my way along the edge of the riprap. At a certain point I had to climb up, or the chick would see me. I set the net down and slid it as quietly as I could up the rocks, climbing behind it until I was at the top of the rock. Staying low, I spotted the gull chick about fifteen feet below me.
She was standing on a small rock. She was looking this way and then looking that way. I was still considering the idea that her parents had this situation under control, that I could leave her there at the water’s edge and her parents would feed her, defend her and teach her to fly.
Her feathers, just a couple weeks old, were starting to break. Her stance seemed a little unsteady. In the binoculars I could see that her eyes were a little sunken, that she was dehydrated. And the obvious sign of feces from dogs, feral cats, no doubt skunks, foxes and raccoons too… This chick didn’t stand a chance. I decided to capture her.
Proving she can evade a net while being captured for a routine exam by one of our invaluable interns.A closer view…
She was fifteen feet away and the net has a ten foot handle. I just needed to scooch a little closer. I just needed to get the net in position without the chick seeing me do it. I’ve never known a gull who couldn’t calculate the reach of a net in a moment’s glance.
Fortunately a paddle boarder with a boom box and a dog on board paddled by, giving me plenty of distracting cover to make the last few feet down the rock and push the basket of the net into a good position to quickly capture the gull.
The chick’s parents were in an uproar circling and crying out their frustration, wrath and fear. The boombox was playing the Dead’s Franklin Tower and I swung the net, surprising the chick and swooping her up. I folded the net’s opening over so that she couldn’t escape and ginger-quickly made my way across the piled rock as a lone adult pelican glided across the surface of the bay, his wingtips nearly touching his reflection’s. (It’s been a long time since we’ve treated a Brown Pelican.)
A small blood sample yields a lot of information about the general health of our patient
Struggling to keep knowledge alive in the face of calamity isn’t some new fad. We can’t turn the corner without stepping over the bones of those who were forced by conditions to put some small good thing, a shared language, an important heirloom, a lesson that was learned at great cost, into some kind of basket in hopes it would make it past a barrier – whether death or disaster. We make time capsules containing the best of what we have hoping it will be of use to our grandchildren, to help them know how things are, how they were, and what to not do, at least.
Who can’t sense the danger of an imminent break in continuity? When California Brown Pelicans were driven nearly to extinction in the late 1960s, their population had plummeted from millions when gold was found at Sutter’s place, to 5000 pairs in 120 years later. Think of the storehouse of pelican knowledge that died with those millions of pieces of the great pelican all. And think of the impoverishment of the babies who will soon grotesquely outnumber the grandparents. A pelican might live 40 years! Think of how long it would take for a population to regain its balance with the right number of 40 year olds, of thirty year olds, of teens, of chicks.
Pelicans had been thriving in their current form for over thirty million years. Ice ages had come and gone in that time and still millions of pelicans soared up and down the ever changing coast of this continent, but 120 years of industrial civilization was nearly the end of the species.
Terrible ends of eras that had lasted so long they’d seemed immutable are part and parcel of our daily life.
If we want some piece of our amassed knowledge and skills to make it to our descendants, in other words, if we care about the future, then a contingency is needed that sees our work safely across the abyss of disaster and discontinuity. In times such as ours, we are trying to educate our children, rescue all who we can, preserve hard won knowledge, and leave what we have for those who follow us and who will be aided by our work.
The wild world awaits once you step out of the box….Freedom freshly restored, the young gull surveys her suddenly widened surroundings.
Getting the gull back in her nest would have been the best outcome possible. It would have been easy enough to boat out to the platform and climb up with her, but the danger of disrupting the other siblings was too great. Instead we opted to care for the wayward chick. Once she was able to fly we would return her to her family, where she could learn firsthand the state of the art of gull knowledge of the bay.
One of the most significant tasks in caring for orphaned wildlife is to preserve their wildness. The first step in the preservation of anything is that we love, respect and side with who, or where or what is to be preserved. In the case of young gulls, it is critical that we take the necessary steps to protect the integrity of their wildness. Gulls, from hatching to adulthood, will readily adopt strategies to extract resources from human production – this is a wide ranging problem, often couched in terms of the problem gulls present people, when in fact, it is gulls who suffer. Who’s population is in decline the world over?
So we brought the gull into care. At HWCC we have an aviary purpose-built to accommodate gulls, pelicans, cormorants, and other species who live similarly near the coast – that is, stand around, float some, fly to higher look outs, and eat fish. While the she did not have the immediate company of other gulls, she did have cormorants and egrets as housing mates. Privacy was maintained. Handling was reduced. Fish, supplements and weekly physical examinations kept her on the right track. She grew on schedule.
We’d hoped that once she began to fly it would mean that her siblings back at her nest would also be flighted and that we could reunite her with her family. It was nearly two weeks before she was flying with enough vigor and agility – gull-like! – that we thought we could release her back to her parents’ further care. When we went back to her family’s nest, however, they were gone without a trace. There were no fledgling gulls anywhere. Her family was no longer an option. We’d have to make sure she could fend herself before she could be released.
Birds flying away: is there a sweeter sight than seeing our young take wing?
You can’t build an Earth, or even a coastline. A wild orphaned gull in captivity is missing crucial lessons that we have not been able to replicate. The best piece of our care has to be an orphan’s intact wildness, – a preference for her own kind. The greatest chance of learning what all of us must learn if we are to be wild and free is to have the example of our successful elders. For an orphan to have the teachers she needs, she must accept that she and they belong together. This is something that we can encourage and ensure. We can do everything in our power to keep wild animals wild. It works.
Soon the young gull was as ready as we could help her get. Any more lessons would be learned under the wide sky and above the bay, in the company of her kind.
Flying with strength, she explored.
The future is daunting. The best science of our time tells us that we face a calamity the likes of which industrial society has never known. There have been Pompeiis and Krakatoas in every age, on every shore, but not in the last 65 million years have we known global devastation like that which might loom.
If the human race is severely reduced in numbers and wealth and teeters on the brink of extinction; if we spend our days struggling to protect ourselves, our closest loved ones, feed ourselves; if our lives are consumed by a migration to some livable portion of the north or the south, what we know is that in that time, as in all times, there will be need to provide care for injured and orphaned wild animals, trapped in a destruction not their making, who we encounter along the way. There has never been a time when some people did not dedicate themselves to providing that care, and as long as there are people at all, there always will be.
After circling the area, our former patient finds her place among a mixed flock of other gulls.
I don’t think there is a single wildlife rehabilitator with her feet on the ground who thinks any of us are saving the world from its looming and mounting catastrophes through wildlife care. In fact, we know very well we are not. That knowledge is an ache we all endure, no matter where on the field of love for the wild we find ourselves. For wildcare givers, the Earth upon whom our patients depend is being made barren and still we must do our work. Just as anyone who cares deeply must act when the one for whom they care for is threatened. The day is fraught with the trauma and despair of an environment in chaos and still we must offer this one gull, just as we would offer our sister, a second chance.
UPDATE: 100 birds currently in care on Lower Klamath. Your support urgently needed. Please donate today
The avian botulism outbreak response on the Lower Klamath Basin Refuge was just on the verge of being ramped down when dozens more ducks turned up sick from the bacteria. Up until yesterday, 3 birds, a Mallard, a Gadwall and a Northern Pintail had been released and 2 Gadwalls were in care and improving. It was beginning to look like a much less serious year until yesterday afternoon over thirty birds were brought in to the facility on Highway 161, north of Shasta, on the Volcanic Legacy Scenic Highway (more info to follow.)
To support the effort, Humboldt Wildlife Care Center/bax has sent a staff person to help with the sudden influx.
A new incubator purchased with the support of donations and grants helps make this isolated location north of Mt Shasta into a functioning wildlife rehabilitation facility. Our new incubators first botulism patient, a Mallard in the paralyzed phase of the illness.First recovered patients are released back into the Refuge in an area unaffected by the outbreak.
You can help too! Your material support of Bird Ally X is what allows to meet the challenges of our times support imperiled wild animals. Help save these ducks and all of our wild patients. Please donate today.
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.Pull back, and the young bird is gone.
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!
Four wild ducks are being treated for avian botulism infection at the hospital Bird Ally X built on the Tulelake Wildlife Refuge last year.
Two BAX co-directors, January Bill, who lives in the region, and Marie Travers, will be leading the effort. A botulism outbreak on the Klamath Refuge in 2018 resulted in over 400 wild birds, predominantly waterfowl, to be treated for the bacterial infection, and thousands of other birds deaths. (read more about last year’s response.)
Marie Travers (left) and January Bill examine a patient during the 2018 botulism response on the Tulelake Refuge.
January and Marie also led last year’s response, which resulted in hundreds of birds saved from the paralyzing disease, as well as the development of protocols for care which were shared around the western states, where avian botulism is becoming a chronic problem, as well as the entire wildlife rehabilitation community.
Avian botulism is caused by bacteria that is commonly found in fish. During dry hot spells, as water levels drop and water temperatures rise, infected fish who are killed by the environmental conditions are then eaten by piscivorous (fish-eating) waterfowl. Avian botulism is neuro-toxic, causing paralysis and death. Infected dead birds contribute to the virulence of the outbreak, as their carcasses are also eaten by other wildlife. Because water is at the heart of the problem, managing the conditions is fraught with all of the political obstacles that water wars in the West have historically presented.
Effective protocols can give botulism patients a good prognosis, but the first few days of treatment require intensive hands-on care. Here, January Bill administers IV fluids to a suffering duck.
As the world spins into its unsettling future, with fires raging across the equator and arctic, we know that wildlife tragedies like this will increase, everywhere. We also know that our wild neighbors, innocent of this disaster, will suffer as much or more than the human communities that are also being deeply harmed – including our own, wherever we are.
With your support, BAX will always be here, committed to helping the wild victims of human catastrophe, providing care for those who survive. Your support is what makes our response to botulism in Tulelake, and all our work, possible. We need you now. Thank you!
It’s been a crazy Summer. Our caseload is the heaviest in our 40 year history. Right now, in a lull that allows me to stop a minute to get out a quick appeal for help, we have nearly 60 patients in care.
Two orphaned raccoons in our care are close to being weaned. After weaning they still have 10 weeks of growing and learning to do before we can release them back to their wild freedom.
At a time when our need is greatest, our donations are at their lowest. We need your help.
13 raccoons, 4 opossums, a Green heron, two cormorants, 6 swallows, 2 Song sparrows, 2 swifts, 3 deer fawns, and more need your support. As do all the animals that we will admit in the remaining months of baby season, and beyond. If our caseload trend continues, we will admit another 300 to 400 animals before this year ends.
Staff removes multiple hooks and line from an entangled Common Murre. Derelict fishing gear results in thousands of Marine wildlife deaths annually in California alone!Ten baby opossums admitted after their mother was hit by a car. A kind and compassionate person brought them to our clinic from Southern Humboldt July 3rd. It will be another few weeks before any of this litter will be released.
We simply can’t meet the challenge of caring for wild animals injured by human activity and the derangement of their habitat caused by our ongoing ecological crisis without your help.
Also, I can’t express deeply enough our gratitude for those who’ve chosen to sustain us monthly. Regular donations, rolling in each month are what keep us going … While we don’t have the money we need to cover all of our expenses at this time, if it weren’t for those generous monthly contributions, we wouldn’t have the day to day funds to keep stocked on basic food and medicine. Thank you. If you’d like to become a monthly sustainer, follow this link.
Our water bill, our rent, our electric bill, our small staff – each of these are mission critical expenses that can’t be paid without your financial support. Please help. Donate today! Thank you for keeping our doors open!
It’s the time when this year’s wild babies are first showing their independence, climbing from nests, stepping out on a limb. But one false step, and that independence comes crashing down.
Inside the box, a young owl, a “brancher” who’s left the nest but isn’t ready to fly, waits to be returned to their family.
Late in the afternoon the day before Mother’s Day, such a misstep brought a very young Barred Owl (Strix varia) down to the ground in Sequoia Park. Someone walking among the tall Redwoods saw the young, fluffy bird and gave Humboldt Wildlife Care Center/bax a call. Clinic staff went to the scene, and found a young “brancher” (a term birders use to describe a young bird after they first leave the nest but before they can fly) who’d lost their footing. Staff decided to bring the owl into our clinic for a quick exam.
With no injuries and in good health, we made plans to return the owl to their family the next day.
HWCC assistant rehabilitation manager, Lucinda Adamson, scans the tall trees for signs of the young owl’s parents.
No matter the species, it is much better to return healthy wild babies and juveniles to their parents when possible. We do a pretty good job of providing care for owlets at HWCC/bax, but no one can provide care the way a parent can. Keeping wild families together is one of our primary goals during the busy wild baby seasons of Spring and Summer.
So with the young owl in a box, our wild reunion team went back to Sequoia Park to return them to their family.
The tree with the nest cavity was located and the owl was given a lift up to the rough bark where they could get a good grasp. The young owl immediately began to climb toward the only home they’ve ever known.“You have to climb before you can fly.” – an old Owl proverb.Twenty feet and climbing!Focused on the ascent, a three week old Owl shows the world what free solo really looks like!Everything happens under the parent’s watchful gaze.
Had this owlet fallen to the ground in a more wild setting than a city park in the center of town, most likely they would have managed getting themselves back into the tree and out of harm’s way. However in a highly used public park, the possibility for the wrong kind of human intervention was simply to great to do nothing.
Every juvenile or baby wild animal that we admit at HWCC/bax is analyzed for the potential for reunion with their family, or even fostering them to another family of the same species. It’s a big relief for all when we are able to successfully reunite wild families. For those who are truly orphans, about half of our patients each year, we have protocols and methods to help them reach true independence with their wildness intact.
You can help! In fact without your help, we’d dry up and blow away like one hit wonders from the 70s! Your support keeps us open, prepared, and available to help all of our wild neighbors when their proximity to civilization leads to trouble. Thank you for helping make sure that our mission is kept on track and our work is supported. Thank you for donating and thank you for your love of the wild.
At Humboldt Wildlife Care Center/bax, we treat well over a thousand orphaned or injured wild animals each year. But we help thousands more without ever getting close to them! Every Spring and Summer day our phone rings dozens of times as people run across wild animals in strange situations. Maybe they are in a conflict with a wild animal who is using their home as a den site, or a nest has been knocked down when limbing a tree.
A sunny warm Sunday in Spring is a perfect time to practice our phone skills! Here one our awesome interns (Erika Espino) plays the role of a caller who has a problem with a denning Raccoon
Many of these problems can be solved on the phone! We’ve helped hundreds of people co-exist with Raccoons by coaching them through convincing a mother Raccoon to den somewhere besides their crawlspace. We’ve assisted hundreds more over the years in getting baby birds back in their nests, or rebuilding their nests if they’ve been unintentionally destroyed.
Solving conflicts over the phone isn’t easy! Often, people who call are very frustrated and a little bit mad at the wild animal trying to use their space. Patience is usually required in order to get through this part of the call. But we always remember: The caller wants our help. They want to do the right thing. That’s why they called us.
And our solutions have to work! There are always those in any community who will leap to the lethal solution. If our program doesn’t get the job done, there is a very good chance that the caller will opt for violence and be forever convinced that humane solutions to conflict aren’t effective.
An HSU wildlife student and one of our wonderful volunteers (Alex Rivera) practices helping resolve denning Raccoon problems.
When you are on the phone with someone who is upset about the actions of a wild animal, and that animal’s life is on the line, the moment can be very stressful. As with all stressful tasks, preparation is critical!
We offer volunteers and staff regular opportunities to sharpen their phone skills with our Phone Workshop, which Bird Ally X developed. Using the details of actual calls, our participants practice helping various callers resolve a conflict or get a wild animal the care they need. Teaching the next generation of wildlife care providers the skills we’ve all acquired over the decades of practice is an important part of our mission. Operating Humboldt Wildlife Care Center not only provides help for the injured and orphaned wild neighbors of our region, and not only resolves wildlife conflicts peacefully saving perhaps thousands more each year, but our small facility on the edge of Humboldt Bay acts as our lab and ongoing classroom to develop and teach effective ways of caring for our wild neighbors and promoting co-existence with the Wild.
Your support makes this work possible! Thank you! Want to help? Please donate today! DONATE
We’re renovating and expanding our fawn housing this month to get ready for the orphaned young deer who will soon be coming our way. Each year we care for 6-12 fawns and our housing needs work!
Expanding the available space for our orphaned fawns will cost about $2000. We need to complete the work by the middle of May in order for it to benefit this year’s orphaned babies.
