Gearing Up For Spring

Posted on February 21, 2019February 21, 2019 by Monte Merrick

In mid-February many of us are dreading the long wait for the return of warmer weather, and all of the joys of Spring and Summer. Here at Humboldt Wildlife Care Center, we are not dreading the long wait at all. For us, it’s right around the corner! By the end of next month, we need to have all of our ducks in a row and be prepared for the arrival of the first wild orphans of the season.

In the past, we’ve admitted our first orphan Raccoons (Procyon lotor) as early as March 31st. Meanwhile, we are keeping busy during our so-called downtime taking care of the injured hawks, seabirds, raccoons, songbirds and more. We’ve already admitted over 80 injured wild patients in 2019.

Western Grebe in care, 2019. Fish are the cure for young struggling seabirds. $1.25 a pound isn’t that much to save a life!

We have important projects to complete before Spring madness fully kicks in and we need your help.

Our main building, a double wide modular that’s been our primary facility and office since 2006 is in need of critical repairs that will cost us over $2000.
Our Seabird pools need a thorough rejuvenation – liners need to be replaced and pumps and filters need to be repaired, costing approximately $500.
Last year we admitted close to a dozen orphan fawns, about the maximum we can handle. We need to increase that capacity and add a better yard. This will cost approximately $2000
Not a project, just a regular fact of our existence, but we need to pay to use the land our facility is on at the Jacoby Creek Land Trust – our annual rent is $6000.
All of this is in addition to the cost of caring for each of our patients. We accomplish a lot on very little. We have one full time paid staff person and two part time staff, whose contributions to our mission are invaluable. Already underpaid, if we were to be unable to maintain their positions, the care we provide our patients would suffer.

We operate on the proverbial shoestring. Each year we raise the funds and resources to complete our mission as we go along. So far, we’ve managed to get through each year with our bills paid. And each new year, we start again. It’s stressful, certainly, but it’s the only thing we can do.

Nestling Barn Owls in care 2018: Babies of any wild species show up at our door everyday in Spring and Summer. These two, from different nests, eventually made it back to actual Barn owl parents south of Ferndale. An excellent outcome!

So for 2019, we’ll be mounting three major efforts to gather the support we need to meet our challenges.

This Spring, our goal is to raise one third of our annual budget by the end of April. That’s $50,000! If we raise $50,000 by April 30, we will have paid not only the expenses of February, March and April, but we’ll enter May with the resources on hand and the facility prepared to begin meeting the following months, our busiest time, Half of the animals we treat in any year are admitted in June, July, and August. Your support this Spring will give us a strong place to stand as we enter the most difficult part of our year.

Our community’s support is how we meet the challenge of treating hundreds of wild neighbors each year, helping resolve thousands of wildlife conflicts peacefully and prepare the next generation of wildlife caregivers.

Thank you for helping us help our wild neighbors.

Please Donate Today!

Five days left to comment! Let CA Department of Pesticide Regulation know you care that rodenticides are reaching nearly every wild animal in our state!

Posted on January 11, 2019January 11, 2019 by Monte Merrick

Now four years after second generation anti-coagulant rodenticidess were taken off store shelves and restricted to licensed applicator use (commercial, agriculture) studies have shown that these poisons are still increasing dramatically in the populations of many different wild species, from threatened birds of prey to Bobcats. Latest results show over 90% of wild animals test positive for rodenticide exposure!

The California Department of Pesticide Regulation (DPR) has begun the process of re-evaluating these terrible poisons for further action to address their mounting prevalence in the environment.

Click on this image for link to full document.

The deadline for public comments has been extended to January 16, 2019.

Our friends at Raptors Are the Solution (RATS) has this suggestion for commenting on the DPR action

” Please send a short email to Rodenticide.Comments@cdpr.ca.gov expressing your support for DPR’s proposed decision and urging them to follow through and remove all second-generation anticoagulants (SGARs) from use in California. Although the state banned SGARs for use by consumers in 2014, a giant loophole allows the pest control industry to continue using them widely.

If possible, please forward a copy of your sent email to raptorsarethesolution@gmail.com. We would like to track the number of comments submitted. ”

As always, your involvement makes a difference! Let’s start the wheels rolling to get all of these wildlife-killing toxins off the shelves and out of our lives! Thank you!!

Thank you!!!!

Posted on January 7, 2019January 7, 2019 by Monte Merrick

Thank you to everyone who supported us throughout 2018, and especially those who made donations during our crucial year-end fundraising efforts. We matched the amount we’ve raised other years, and we enter 2019 in the black! Your support is very alleviating of stress and worry!!!

Now for some real talk: 2018 was a very difficult year, with a workload that was nearly 50% greater than 2017, but over a 10% dip in available resources. If not for in-kind donations such as milk replacer for the orphaned fawns in our care last Summer (Thank you Anita and Jed!!!) we might not have been able to cover our expenses.

There are reasons for this drop, such as two major fires nearby, Redding and Paradise, that required our community to step in and help out, as well as very important mid-term election that had compassionate and caring people feeling that it was an “all hands on deck” situation. And it was! Hopefully we are in the midst of turning around the worst of the last two years on the national front.

As we enter another potentially challenging year, it’s up to us to remind all that our wild neighbors are important members of our community, and the care we provide them when they are in need is a critical component of the humane future we all seek

As the new year becomes familiar, with its own clamorous needs, we’ll be here, asking for support, offering ways to prevent injuries, and advocating for our patients and all of the wildlife with whom we share this beautiful world.

Thank you for your past support, and also, it’s not too late to help! If you’d like to pitch in, you can DONATE HERE today! Thank You!

So Many Screech-Owls

Posted on January 7, 2019January 7, 2019 by Monte Merrick

Every Autumn and Winter, as shortened days leave afternoon commuters driving home in the dark, as early evenings bring nocturnal wild animals out to forage and hunt, at Humboldt Wildlife Care Center we suddenly start admitting many more owls, mostly hit by vehicles.

Surprisingly, many owls survive their collision with speeding cars, especially smaller owls who have less mass to contribute to the energy of the impact. Less energy in the impact means the odds increase of the bird avoiding some of the life threatening outcomes, such as broken bones, dislocated joints, eye trauma and other injuries their larger cousins usually suffer when hit by vehicles.

Since the first day of Autumn 2018 until today, January 7, we’ve admitted 14 Western Screech-Owls (Megascops kennicottii) for care after they each but two were likely hit by vehicles. Sadly, this is a fairly typical number of owls for us to admit at this time of year. If past years are any indication, there are several more of these small owls yet to be hit by cars before Winter’ end.

When owls are hit by cars, eye trauma potentially causing blindness is a common injury. Our initial exam of all patients includes checking their ability to see and respond to visual stimulation.

While all but two of the 14 Screech-owls admitted this Fall and Winter were hit by vehicles, it’s also true that each came from highly rural, two lane roads away from the major highways of Humboldt County. Alderpoint, Carlotta, Bayside, Kneeland, Freshwater are the the most common locations of Screech-owls being hit by vehicles.

The Safety Corridor on US 101 between Arcata and Eureka is a special zone of mandatory headlights and a speed limit reduced to 50 miles per hour due to the businesses and intersections along those few miles of four lane highway. We know that there will be cross traffic and so we prepare for it. We slow down, we turn on our headlights and we raise our awareness, for the sake everyone’s safety.

We need to bring that same kind of awareness to our driving habits on rural highways.

The beauty of our region – the Redwood forests, the bay, the ocean, the mountains – is part and parcel of our love for our home. Here in Humboldt the Wild always makes itself felt and known – a strong sea breeze comes up from the bay through the mall parking lot, or across the Arcata Plaza. We live in a region rich in wild neighbors and to be better neighbors, we can anticipate that they are here – from Screech-owls to Spotted Owls, from Spotted Skunks to Great Egrets – we can accommodate their needs

Chiefly, we can slow down when we drive. We can remember that we steer our machinery through our neighbors’ homes. The least we can do is strive to not run them down.

Staff examines each wing for fractures or other injuries.

Often Screech-owls, especially in daylight hours, won’t leave their transport carriers upon release. So we resort to placing the Owl on a branch or some other suitable perch.

Sometimes, they simply float away from the palm of the hand, before we set them on the nearby stump…

Western Screech-owl flying back to freedom.

Surprisingly, 14 Screech-owls admitted in 3 of the Fall/Winter months is not an unusually high number. In fact it’s well within what we call normal. The only means we have to reduce this number is to change our habits and raise our awareness. Seeing wildlife is a challenge for us all in these highly abstracted times when the natural world can seem an afterthought. Still it’s our responsibility to operate our machinery as gently as we can.

Bicyclists, pedestrians, even motorcyclists, know the horror of not being seen or expected by car and truck drivers. Share the Road! See Motorcycles! Stop for Me! Signs like these are all over our communities. Sadly the only real warnings we post about wildlife crossings are for those animals who are big enough to cause damage to people or property in a collision. We need to expand our concerns. We need Owl Awareness. We need Wildlife Watchouts!

Until we’ve managed to better share this world we don’t own, our work helping these Owls, as well as all the other wild neighbors who are orphaned, injured and in need, due to their collision with the human-built world, Your support makes it possible. Please help keep our doors open, our lights on and the frozen mice coming. Our wild neighbors in need, need you. Thank you

DONATE TODAY

2018, Challenging, Unpredictable, Heartbreaking, Rewarding…

Posted on December 30, 2018December 31, 2018 by Monte Merrick

Dear Friends, Supporters, and fellow lovers of the Wild,

Henry Thoreau noted over a 150 years ago that “in wildness is the preservation of the world.” You could say it’s the corollary of a more recent observation making the rounds on social media right now, attributed to Muhammad Ali, that “it’s not the deer that is crossing the road, rather it’s the road that is crossing the forest.

WANT TO SKIP THE READ AND GO SEE PICTURES OF SOME OF THIS YEAR’S FAWNS AND RACCOONS BEING RELEASED? click here and here. WANT TO MAKE A DONATION NOW WITHOUT SCROLLING ALL THE WAY DOWN? click here

It’s not hard to see that our society has put its faith and effort behind expansion of villages, towns, nations, trading routes, mechanization, the lot of it; – all of which has been, intentionally or not, a war on the wild. As a whole, our society sides with the road, we side with efforts to tame, the efforts to neutralize the wild and wildness. In short, we betray our home.

Our society has been betraying the wild for centuries, if not millennia, and it’s not some great abstraction or controversy to be debated, over which we must wrestle with viewpoints that give humans dominion, or that find in the world only human meaning. The simple truth can be seen on the side of every road we drive right here in Humboldt County. How many raccoons run down by vehicles on the highway and left to bloat do we need to see? We all know from what our own eyes tell us every day that the modern world finds its pavement to be far more necessary than the wild it destroys. Our allegiance to our machinery is so old and, by now, so integral to our lives that trying to imagine a world in which a Raccoon mother and her four young ones are more important than getting to Arcata in ten minutes is largely impossible.

We live in a world we didn’t make. Yet we make it every day.

One morning on US 101 as it passes through Eureka, someone threw their leftover fast food trash out their car window. At Humboldt Wildlife Care Center that meant that we admitted two Western Gulls (Larus occidentalis) that day. Both had been drawn to the food on the pavement there only to be hit by cars, injured so badly that humanely helping them into the next life was the only real treatment possible. Both gulls were rescued from further injury and suffering by compassionate people who saw the terrible thing unfold and couldn’t just drive on by.

Ours is a world where none of us are safe from accidentally harming our wild neighbors. We come from nature, like the rest of our neighbors, yet we’ve made our alliance with the struggle to overcome her. As if there might be a place there, beyond the Wild, where we might stand. And there is: extinction.

Every morning this year, Humboldt Wildlife Care Center/bax opened its doors, turned on its lights, became alive with the activity of staff and volunteers launching in to the day’s tasks caring for our patients and responding to phone calls regarding wild animals in need. We sent out teams to rescue hawks from the bank of the Mad River, or a hummingbird trapped inside a storefront. We opened our clinic to what may come – traumatically injured owls who’d been hit by a car; a group of orphaned raccoons whose mother had been trapped and taken far away; a young fawn rescued from one of the many fires this year, too badly burned to survive; a wayward fledgling crow successfully reunited with her parents; – a Pelican rescued; – a Pelican released.2018 is the most active year in Bird Ally X history. Not only did we care for nearly 1200 patients admitted to HWCC/bax here in Humboldt, our staff from around the state (notably, two BAX co-founders January Bill and Marie Travers) responded to an avian botulism outbreak in Siskiyou County, establishing a temporary field hospital to care for more than 400 ducks and shorebirds. In order to accomplish this volunteers from all over California helped, including support from HWCC staff, interns and volunteers. Three of the six BAX co-founders also traveled across the country and across oceans responding to oil spills that impacted wildlife as a part of other organizations’ responses. We’ve cared for more patients and reached more people through our outreach programs and internet presence than ever before and we struggle each day, each week, each month to cover our basic expenses.

Each year we talk about the mounting challenges, the difficulties, the successes, the sorrows, the joys of our work rescuing, rehabilitating and releasing back to freedom our wild neighbors in need. Each year we note the worsening symptoms of Earth out of balance. And each year we are committed to providing treatment, to the best of our abilities, for all those wild neighbors who are orphaned, or injured, or sickened by their contact with the built world – by their contact with us.

Each year we do what we can to advocate for our wild neighbors, to at least reduce the numbers who are hit by cars, trapped, caught and maimed or killed by our pets, whose nests are destroyed, whose wild, free and innocent lives are interrupted by our thoughtless machines and our tacit acceptance of the havoc they wreak.

Each year we are grateful and appreciative of your many-faceted support, moral, financial, and even sweat equity. Many of you work hard to bring balance back to the human experience of living on Earth. Your contribution is seen, recognized and highly valued.

We don’t know what trials are coming our way, but we know that deep love for the wild, compassion, love for our world, commitment, hard work and education must be woven so tightly together that they seem as one.

We know that there is no way for a humane future to come that doesn’t include taking care of those who we’ve harmed. That’s why we’re here. That’s why you support our work. It’s why we get misty when you thank us, with words, with money, with towels, with your love, and with your labor.

It’s also why we need you to support us like never before. Our workload is increasing at a rate faster than our ability to pay for it. Our mission demands that we grow, that we are able to accomplish more, not less, on behalf of our wild patients – as well as our colleagues for whom we also work. If we are to accomplish our work, it will be your support that made it so. We look forward to leaning on you in 2019 and beyond. Thank you.

With deep respect, gratitude – working together in alliance with the wild for a more humane 2019,

Monte Merrick
co-director Bird Ally X
director HWCC/bax

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Awesome Video of a Barn Owl’s Return to the Wild

Posted on December 28, 2018December 28, 2018 by Monte Merrick

Here in the midst of our hectic Holiday season, with so many stressful moments among the celebrations of peace, joy and our common humanity, we share the recent release of a young Barn Owl (Tyto Alba), rescued from exposure, dehydration and starvation when he was found hiding on the ground among bushes, cold and wet, where the Hammond Trail meets the Clam Beach parking lot.

After providing emergency stabilization care, such as you would provide any lost hiker – warmth, warm fluids, and later some food – and a safe, restful space, soon the owl was able to move to outdoor housing. With a healthy appetite and will to thrive, the young adult was soon back in fighting form, ready for the demands of wild freedom. We took him back to fields above Clam Beach. Watch the video for an excellent view of one of the Wild’s children coming home. And if you can, please, help. It’s your support that makes our work possible. Donate today.

**Stop by our clinic at 2182 Old Arcata Rd and pick up our 2018 mug for just a**
**$10 minimum donation!**

Christmas Song Sparrow Release!

Posted on December 25, 2018December 26, 2018 by Monte Merrick

So far in 2018, at Humboldt Wildlife Care Center we’ve admitted nearly 50 birds and one bat who we know struck windows (there may be more, but we can’t say with certainty). This is close to 5% of our total patients admitted. Almost two-thirds of these animals suffered life-ending injuries in the collision! As we’ve mentioned in past posts, up to a billion birds each year are killed by collisions with glass. Still, many of our patients who’ve suddenly smashed into that invisible wall do recover! On the day of the winter solstice, we admitted a Song Sparrow (Melospiza melodia) who’d collided with a window in Eureka. If you’re going to smash into a window, it helps if you’re small. The less mass you bring to the impact, the less traumatic injury you’re likely to suffer.

After such a collision, it is critical that an injured bird get immediate attention. We always recommend that a bird who has struck a window be brought to our clinic for an evaluation and the safety of care while we assess the level of injury, and the need for treatment. Sometimes we might release the bird within 24 hours, and sometimes it takes a little longer, even without any broken bones.

After four days of treatment, safety and readily available food, this Song Sparrow was back to normal. On Christmas Day we took him back to the neighborhood where he was rescued and restored his freedom.

In the aviary, checking out the box he might travel in if all goes well….

Flying inside one of our songbird aviaries, looking good!
A quick exam after observing flight: all is well.
Out of the box!
Up…
Up…
and Away!
Healthy former patients, “lighting out for the Territories” is the best gift we could get…
HWCC/bax intern Brooke Brown agrees!

This Song Sparrow was one of the lucky “window strikes.” Besides the relatively minor injuries he suffered, the simple fact of being seen and rescued by the kind person who brought him to us saved his life. Our ability to provide care for our region’s wild neighbors in need is wholly dependent on your generosity. Without your support, we wouldn’t have been here for the nearly 1200 patients we’ve treated so far in 2018. We’re going to need your support in 2019 too! Thank you for keeping our doors open!

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all photos: Laura Corsiglia/ Bird Ally X

Tonight! Celebrate the Volunteers!

Posted on December 16, 2018 by Monte Merrick

Come out tonight to help us honor and celebrate the generous and compassionate people who help Humboldt Wildlife Care Center everyday. Without our volunteers we wouldn’t be able to meet our mission. Volunteers get it done!

Can’t make it but would like to make a donation in honor of our volunteers’ hard work? Donate here!

Season’s Greetings, 2018!

Posted on December 7, 2018December 8, 2018 by Monte Merrick

Dear Friends and Supporters!

Season’s greetings once again! Another year of challenges, growth, griefs and joys! Bird Ally X/Humboldt Wildlife Care Center staff and resources were deeply challenged by record numbers of patients, our busiest summer, very late season babies, and emergency care of birds hit by botulism in the Tulelake National Wildlife Refuge. As climate change and other disasters alter what we thought was immutable, we find our knowledge and comprehension of the world no longer seems to fill in the map.

While our maps are suddenly full of blank spaces, the world has no voids. Each nook and cranny has someone who lives there. From the scorpion in the crevice in a high desert cliff to the salamander family nested beneath an old discarded tire.

For cavity-nesters like the Chestnut-backed chickadees (Poecile rufescens) on this card, a hollow at the top of a utility pole in the middle of Blue Lake, California is a perfectly fine place to raise your babies.

And it would have been a fine place, if PG&E hadn’t needed to replace the pole. Mishaps like these, at various points on the spectrum of preventability, are the inevitable result of the built world taken at face value by the resourceful and always honest wild. No matter where we build and operate the machinery of our times, if we aren’t careful a wild neighbor, a wild family, are going to be harmed. And so often, we aren’t careful.

That’s why BAX/HWCC is here. We admitted five tiny young chickadee babies that day when the big PG&E truck rolled up our driveway. Had they not been seen when their nest was destroyed, the babies would have died. Instead, your support gave them a second chance. We released them a month later, fully fledged and ready for independence, back in Blue Lake, into a flock of their own kind along the banks of the Mad River.

At this time of year, it is common and useful to give thanks for what we have and to express our love and warmth to those who travel though the mysteries with us. It’s enjoyable to imagine a peaceful future, to dream toward it, and to hope that even our smallest wild neighbors are invited to partake in it – a de-escalated war on Mother Earth.

Thank you for dreaming this with us – and for doing something about it. We wish you a warm holiday season and a happy new year! – We’re counting on you in 2019!

Thank you!

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

A Peregrine Falcon we called Carson

Posted on December 3, 2018December 3, 2018 by Monte Merrick

With deep sadness, we say goodbye to one of Humboldt Wildlife Care Center’s most famous captive raptors, the Peregrine Falcon (Falco peregrinus) we called Carson. Carson served as a “wildlife ambassador” on our education team for more than 12 years. His time with us ended over Thanksgiving weekend, when he was found deceased in his enclosure where he was cared for daily.

The cause of death has yet to be determined, but it’s rare for a captive Peregrine Falcon to live more than 20 years. First admitted as young bird in early 2005, he was no more than two years old. Suffering a fractured femur after having likely been hit by a car, surgery was performed but the bone healed poorly preventing his release.

For many wild animals (over a million animals in the US each year) life ends with being hit by a vehicle. Collisions with cars and trucks account for a huge percentage of Peregrine Falcon fatalities. One study (Barclay and Cade 1983, Santa Cruz Predatory Bird Research Group unpubl.) found that 11% of fatalities in mid-western populations were caused by vehicle collisions.

In the second half of the twentieth century Peregrine Falcons suffered dramatic losses due to widespread use of injurious pesticides (such as DDT) that interfered with reproduction and egg integrity. In fact, Carson was named for Rachel Carson, whose groundbreaking book, Silent Spring, helped fuel the groundswell of public concern over the impact of these toxins in our environment. In 1970, Peregrine Falcons were granted greater federal protection, and when the Endangered Species Act was passed in 1973, Peregrine Falcons were among the first put on the endangered species list (listed, we say). Banning DDT in the United States in 1972, combined with captive breeding and release programs, gave the species what it needed for recovery. In 1999, Peregrine Falcons were taken of the list of endangered species.

In his life as an “education bird”, Carson was introduced to hundreds of kids and adults throughout the Humboldt region, accompanied by our human education team and a message of conservation. Carson has been painted and photographed many times, and displayed annually at Godwit Days, our local Spring birding festival. In his way, he was a Humboldt celebrity. Carson the Peregrine Falcon with long time education team leader, Merry Maloney, who preceded Carson in death by four years. Both Carson and Merry remain in our hearts.

A life of captivity did not dampen the Falcon’s “implacable arrogance”, as California poet Robinson Jeffers described the wild gaze of the raptor…
In his life as Carson, this Peregrine Falcon touched hundreds of human lives – something that would have never happened without initially being hit by a car. We honor the sacrifice he made as well as the work our education team has done in the name of co-existing with the wild.

We’re grateful for the work of Carson, and all the members of our education team, avian and human, did to promote conservation and love for the wild. Carson’s life came to an end just as HWCC/bax embarks on a new education program, with a heightened awareness of the stress and threats to well-being that captivity poses to wild animals. While humane ethics demand that we discontinue use of live animals in our educational efforts, the work done by our team is acknowledged and appreciated. We look forward to building on that effort, keeping the memory of Carson and all those wild neighbors whose lives were re-directed into captivity by an unfortunate event in our hearts. Your support for our work, and for our staff, especially those who worked closely with Carson and are grieving his loss, is appreciated more than we can ever say. Thank you.