Author: Monte Merrick

Pacific Pond Turtle!

Posted on by Monte Merrick

Found on Samoa Beach, this young Pacific Pond Turtle (Actinemys marmorata) was almost kept as a pet. Fortunately he mentioned the turtle to his veterinarian at Sunny Brae Animal Clinic and they cautioned him that the turtle is wild and needs freedom. They called Humboldt Wildlife Care Center and we went over and picked up the curious and active youngster. No injuries or illness were found on his admission exam and he was released to a nearby mucky area that from now on will be known as Turtle’s Delight!

There are so many ways to live on Earth! Some of us spend years wth parental help and supervision on our way to adulthood and others, like this turtle, are born ready

Even though we strive to maintain a professional distance from our patients, sometimes it’s hard not to just be bowled over by the cuteness!

Seriously, though, this young turtle came very close to having his life ruined, spent in a glass box. Fortunately the person agreed to give this turtle his freedom. Also, the turtle was fortunate that the people at Sunny Brae Animal Clinic knew to call us at HWCC.

As we enter Spring and wild babies start to pop up around our community, please let’s help remind each other to keep wild animals wild, and to keep wild families together (even if it’s a family of one turtle!)

Want to help us meet our challenging mission to provide care for injured, orphaned and misplaced wild neighbors? We’ve raised over $4000 toward our March goal of $7000 and need your help! Without you, this turtle and all of our patients would have nowhere to go when the chips are down. You can donate here. Thank you for helping us help our wild neighbors!

photos: BAX

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Sustaining Member Drive!

Posted on by Monte Merrick

This month Bird Ally X is launching a drive for Sustaining Members.

Sustaining members are exactly like anyone who supports our work financially. Except you help us every month. Our Sustaining Members, some give $5 a month, others give $250, form the core of our contributors. Your donation each month not only provides money to accomplish our mission, your contribution also shows your commitment to our success, and the success of our wild neighbors. Seeing your name pop up every month is an invaluable encouragement! And your contribution really adds up! If you signed up for $5 a month, that’s $60 a year! 

$60 feeds the orphaned fawns in our care for five days! Your $5 each month will keep our lifesaving phone service on for one month every year! If you become a Sustaining Member who gives $10 each month you will provide 100 pounds of fish! 100 pounds will feed a recovering Brown Pelican for 20 days. $20 each month will cover the gasoline for 12 trips to Crescent City or Laytonville or Weaverville to transport an orphaned or injured wild animal.  Want to bowl us over? A monthly gift of $1000 will cover the cost of our tenancy at Jacoby Creek Land Trust!

bax-sustainer-image-web

So, how do you sign up? Easy! Just click on our Donate Now link and when you make your contribution, check the box that says to make it monthly!

We often ask for your support. Without it we can’t exist. And we often say that all donations are important no matter the size. Well, it’s true. Think of every bird you’ve ever seen. Without receiving a small bit of sustenance on a very regular basis, that Sparrow or Thrush, Eagle or Crow would have never flown.

Thank you for keeping us in the air!

 

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After Falling in a Grease Trap, a Pigeon’s Goose Is Nearly Cooked

Posted on by Monte Merrick

Early Sunday morning we got a call at Humboldt Wildlife Care Center that an injured bird, probably a pigeon, was running around the parking lot at Eureka Natural Foods, unable to fly. A staffperson headed over to find a Rock Pigeon (Columba livia) who’d been contaminated by cooking grease.

Restaurant grease traps are a fairly common hazard for wild animals in urban or suburban areas. Most municipalities have ordinances that make it illegal for commercial grease traps to be uncovered, but accidents happen.

It’s hard to imagine how bad it must feel to be covered in cooking oil hot enough to give you the equivalent of a bad sunburn. If this pigeon hadn’t been seen and rescued, the result would have been a slow, starving, painful, solitary death.

Cooking grease can be very hard to remove, as anyone who’s ever washed a dirty frying pan knows. Most dish detergents effectively remove grease, but for cooking oils, ease of removal is often tied to the temperature of the wash water –  again, as anyone who has washed a dirty frying pan knows. Unfortunately, high temperature water, such as a dishwasher would use, would be fatal, so we must use water that is close to the patient’s body temperature, in this case around 40˚C (105˚F). This makes the job harder. Pre-treating with another oil that is easier to remove can be helpful.

Multiple pans of water were needed. 

Clean but soaking wet from the bath, the Pigeon was placed in a 38˚C incubator. Wet and also missing a significant amount of feathers, it is easy to see the first and second degree skin burns over his or her entire body.

Now clean, all that’s needed is time to grow in some feathers and heal from the burns.

Rock Pigeons are not appreciated by many, but there is simply no reason to not love these powerful survivors. They take nothing from us. They are not a disaster for native species; and for urban people they may be the most familiar wild neighbor.

We never know. The phone rings and it could be an Eagle, it could be a House Mouse. But someone, somewhere has a wild animal in trouble. There aren’t any other resources but their local wildlife rehabilitator. For nearly 20,000 square miles on the North Coast of California, the size of New Jersey, for most wildlife, there is only Humboldt Wildlife Care Center/BAX. Without your support, there would be nothing. Please help us meet this month’s needs and prepare for our intensely busy wild baby season.  We still need to raise $4000 before the end of March.  Donate here if you can. Thank you!!

photos: Bird Ally X

 

 

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Bald Eagle’s Suffering Ends

Posted on by Monte Merrick

As we posted last week (original story here), we admitted a juvenile Bald Eagle for treatment on March 10th, who’d been in care at another facility since June 2016 after he was found at the base of a tree near Weaverville with broken wings.

It was apparent immediately that the fractures he’d suffered in his left wing had healed improperly for flight or even normal postures. We decided to transport the young raptor to Pacific Wildlife Care (PWC) in Morro Bay where BAX co-director Shannon Riggs, DVM serves as Director of Animal Care. Besides her general work as a wildlife veterinarian, Dr. Riggs is a very experienced orthopedic surgeon. We needed her evaluation and documentation of this bird’s condition.

Last Wednesday, Elissa Blair, who was once a BAX intern and is now a staff wildlife rehabilitator at PWC, and Humboldt-based BAX co-director, Laura Corsiglia took the bird on his journey south.

Shannon Riggs performs a complete examination of the young Eagle.

Restraining an Eagle is always challenging work. Just holding that much wild freedom, even in such a mournful condition, is a rarefied experience. It’s a lot to grasp.

Dr. Riggs prepares the sedated Eagle for radiographs.

A photograph of the x-ray…  

Even though we weren’t surprised, the results of the exam were devastating: a badly healed humerus, shortened by the injury and improper alignment; a nearly fused and immobilized left elbow; left radius and ulna suffered multiple fractures and have healed in a mess of twisted bones; and the bird’s left carpus (wrist area), because the wing dragged on the  ground for nearly a year, suffered a lesion that had changed the shape of bones that are critical for flight. Any one of these issues would prevent this bird from ever flying, of ever being released back to the wild. Combined they made this bird’s life a daily struggle with pain. With the approval of US Fish and Wildlife Service, the young Eagle’s suffering was ended.

When we open our door each morning to be available for injured and orphaned wild animals, we don’t know who is going to walk through … Each day brings new cases, each case brings new challenges. Every patient has her or his own story, their own needs. Some species, due to our society’s atrocious history of abuse, are more strictly protected. All patients however deserve the best care we can provide. While this Eagle won’t ever soar the skies above the Trinity Alps, as was his birthright, at least he’s soaring somewhere.

Thank you for providing us the means to do our job. Your support is critical. Our goal to build up Humboldt Wildlife Care Center into a wildlife hospital that is also a teaching center for the next generation of wildlife rehabilitators is well under way. Please help us carry our work forward. Donate here if you can. Thank you.

All photos: Bird Ally X/Laura Corsiglia

 

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A Young Bald Eagle, A Difficult Case, A Slim Chance.

Posted on by Monte Merrick

Usually we share our successes. Now and again we might share stories of patients whose injuries were so severe that the only care we could provide was to end their suffering, but we don’t often take our supporters and community members through that process. It’s our task and we perform it as we need to, without regret, because it is a simple fact of wildlife rehabilitation that most  of our work consists of ending the suffering of animals still alive but battered, sometimes beyond recognition, let alone repair.

Also, we don’t often share the stories of animals who are still in care. The primary reason is that for wild animals, captivity itself is life threatening. The stress of being in a caregiver’s hand can be too much for a songbird – sudden misfortune, or setbacks in care, can derail a patient’s recovery. Building expectations of happy resolution that doesn’t come seems unnecessary.  Also, it’s simply a cultural standard that we don’t count our proverbial chickens before they’ve hatched. 

So, with all that in mind, here is the story so far of this Bald Eagle (Haliaeetus leucocephalus) who we admitted for care a few days ago.

Last Friday evening, BAX co-founder Laura Corsiglia and one of our long time volunteers met a Warden from California Department of Fish and Wildlife (CDFW) in Willow Creek to accept a Bald Eagle who’d been in care in Weaverville since June of 2016.

Our first glimpse of young Bald Eagle, after meeting CDFW staff in Willow Creek. Although young and disabled, this bird is still formidable!

It is unknown how the young Eagle was injured. According to the Trinity Journal, the fledgling was found at Trinity Lake at the bottom of a tree with an Eagle nest, suffering with multiple fractures of his left wing. (While it isn’t certain, we believe the bird is a male based on his size which is at the smaller end of the spectrum of Eagle sizes.) At the time he was found, a CDFW warden in the area took the fledgling to a veterinarian in Weaverville. Near death due to dehydration and lack of parental care, the Eagle was stabilized by the staff.

For reasons we are not sure of, the Eagle’s treatment continued in Weaverville over the Summer of 2016 into the Winter. In December CDFW staff attempted to transfer him to our facility in Humboldt County (Trinity County is our neighbor to the East) but a rock slide had closed Highway 299 east of Willow Creek, barring passage. Several attempts were made over the next few months to get past the slide during temporary openings without success until last Friday, the 10th of March.

Once in care, immediately BAX staff could see that this Eagle’s left wing was seriously damaged. Multiple fractures to the humerus, radius and ulna have healed with very poor alignment. His wing cannot function at all, nor can he hold it in anything close to a normal position. At this point, only extensive surgery could save this bird’s life let alone help him recover to the point of being releasable.

Our patient after his first day in our care. We immediately contacted the wildlife biologist at USFWS responsible for Migratory Bird permits who grants our permit to rehabilitate birds. We stay in close contact with her any time we treat a specially protected species (most birds are protected under various laws, including the Migratory Bird Treaty Act) such as the Endangered Species Act, or, in this case, the Bald and Golden Eagle Protection Act.

However, this Eagle has been in care for nine months, and since we have one avenue that may give him a chance, we’ve decided to try even though it’s an extremely long shot. Bird Ally X co-founder and co-director, Dr. Shannon Riggs, DVM, who is Director of Animal Care at Pacific Wildlife Care near San Luis Obispo, is a highly accomplished avian orthopedic surgeon – her evaluation of his wing and his chances for a successful surgery are worth seeking. With the approval of the USFWS we’re transporting this bird to her care at that facility this week.

He has a difficult road ahead with the odds stacked heavily against him. If he were a patient like any other, we would likely have already made the decision that further treatment would be unlikely to help and would only compound the misery of captive life.

While his prognosis for recovery is very poor, and his current condition is so poor that humanely ending his suffering may be the only possible outcome, we believe it is worth it to exhaust all possibilities. We will be posting updates as his care proceeds.

The damaged wing is presumably painful and drags on the ground causing secondary wounds. Soon, however, this limbo will end – hopefully with good news, but at least his suffering will be over no matter which direction his care goes.

The care for any injured and orphaned wildlife here on the North Coast wouldn’t be possible without your support. For this patient, when we factor the cost of transport to a facility 500 miles away, the cost of surgery, the cost of rehabilitation post-surgery (here’s hoping!) we will need your help more than ever. We already have a goal for March of $7000 that doesn’t include the care of this young Bald Eagle. Want to help? Donate here. Thank you for supporting our work!

photos: Bird Ally X/Laura Corsiglia
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One Western Grebe Improves Care For All

Posted on by Monte Merrick

A storm-tossed Western Grebe (Aechmophorus occidentalis) was admitted last month at Humboldt Wildlife Care Center.

Western grebes are relatively common birds on the Pacific coast in winter where they can often be seen in the salt chucks, bays, lagoons, and the ocean, often in large groups, just beyond the breaking waves. We treat many each year. Last year we provided care for nearly 30 Western Grebes. 2014 was a bad year for these elegant aquatic birds – we treated 97.

Because Western Grebes are frequent patients, we generally have good results treating their most common ailments, parasites such as tapeworm, emaciation, and loss of waterproofing due to contamination.

In most ways, the Grebe that came in last month was an ordinary patient. Found on the beach in Trinidad, small abrasions under her lower bill had bled and soiled her neck feathers, which caused her feathers to lose their waterproofing. But that wasn’t her primary problem. Her biggest problem was that she is a juvenile who’d been facing her first winter of independence. This year’s exceptionally stormy season got the better of her. Emaciated, dehydrated, and wet, she didn’t stand a chance without rescue.

But in one critical way this Grebe’s treatment was unusual.

Many of the aquatic birds we treat are piscivores, or fish-eaters. Ordinarily, it is the protocol in successful treatment of highly aquatic birds who require pools to offer these patients fish with low fat content. Pool water quality is important to protect and fish with higher fat content has caused problems, the fish oil contaminates the pool water and in turn contaminates the feathers of the patient, which disrupts the carefully maintained waterproofing. In the wild, these contaminants lead to death. Oil isn’t water-soluble. A detergent of some kind is required to remove it. Once oiled, a bird needs to be cleaned.

Caring for aquatic birds is a specialized skill precisely because of their need for water. Pools, water quality, feeding techniques are each crucial elements in providing care, as are the efforts we make to protect our patients from the harm that can be caused by holding aquatic patients out of water. On land and inside our building, birds who typically float on water their entire lives, are highly susceptible to pressure wounds, respiratory infections, and other secondary problems caused by their time in captivity.

An aquatic bird housed in “dry-dock” needs protective wraps to guard against injures from even the softest solid surfaces. Even with these measures, the patient still must get back to water quickly.

Most of the techniques and protocols for rehabilitating injured aquatic birds come from oil spill response. During an oil spill, sometimes thousands of birds might be impacted. The techniques developed to increase success with such large caseloads is the basis for most current aquatic bird care. Generally we follow them with predictable and largely positive results.

However, something very unusual happened in 2016. The low fat fish we feed our patients, Night Smelt were no longer available. Our supplier said there would be nome until April, and that wasn’t even certain.

Fish populations across the oceans are in trouble, of course. Rising sea temperatures, plastic pollution, over-fishing, agricultural waste run-off, acidification are all wreaking havoc on the marine environment and the health of Mother Earth.

So, we got the fish that our suppliers could deliver: River Smelt, known here on the Northwest coast as Eulachons.

Eulachons are a very nutritious fish, with twice as many calories as Night Smelt. They are also bigger. Not so big that they can’t be swallowed whole by a Western Grebe (see video below) but five times larger than night smelt. Mathematically, it’s easy to see how Eulachons are a better fish to feed. Two 50 gram fish hold a total of 150 calories. Night smelt, at 10 grams each and 70 calories per 100 grams, require 20 fish to reach the same energy content!

This Grebe wouldn’t eat for her first week in care. She had no interest in food. She also had an injury just inside her cloaca, or ‘vent’, so it is possible that she was very uncomfortable when eliminating solid waste. In any case, we had to provide her nutrition via a feeding tube, a technique known as ‘gavage’ feeding – basically putting a fish slurry (a blend of smelt, vitamins, and a nutritionally enhanced liquid similar to a protein drink) directly into the patient’s stomach.
Gavage feeding is necessary when a patient isn’t able to self-feed.

Her weight during this period gradually rose. Our schedule for feeding balanced the needs of the patient to not see our scary faces too many times a day against the calories she needed to recover from her near death by starvation.

Typically aquatic birds require about 3 weeks of Night Smelt to recover from clinical emaciation. Of course there is some variance depending on other factors, including the personality of the patient.

[Your support needed! We are several thousand short of our March goal of $7000! Any amount helps! from $5, to $5 a month to $5000 dollars, your generosity goes directly to our mission of direct care and education. Please donate today!]

After the first week in care, going in and out of the pool, the Grebe struggled with her waterproofing. Her feathers around her vent were consistently wet. Besides for the confirmation that she might indeed have a wound healing just inside her digestive tract, her waterproofing issues were keeping her from spending all her time in the pool, which she needed badly. She had begun eating on her own and her weight was climbing steadily. The only thing holding her back was the persistent wetness around her vent. So we applied detergent to that area to give her a boost. Within a day she was waterproof.
After a week in care, she’d started eating on her own, and with our help, she was waterproof.

After 48 hours in the pool, we thought she was going to be released very soon. And then came a major setback. A volunteer went out to check at the end of the day that the birds in the pool had food and our Grebe was completely soaked, sitting on the little net (we call it a ‘haul-out’) we have for birds who need get out of the water. A healthy bird rarely uses it – it’s essentially a lifeboat for a bird who is struggling.

We pulled her from the pool, put her under a pet dryer and kept her indoors overnight. We analyzed the pool for what might have caused her problem. An obvious suspect, of course was the fish, the fatty Eulachons that had been such an effective food for her emaciation.
This is a very soggy bird using her haul-out. 50˚F water isn’t comfortable for warm blooded animals without thir protective shell. Aquatic birds rely on their feathers to satay warm and dry.

How fish are presented in pools is a tricky proposition no matter what the fat content is. Pieces of fish rather than whole fish are an oily mess even with Night Smelt. Our pools all have an overflow system so that any oils from fish or feces on top of the water are constantly being eliminated.

The problem was identified and we took corrective action. The basket we place the fish was not allowing water to freely flow, trapping oils. Every time our patient put her head in that water to grab a fish, she was picking up the oils and then spreading them around body when she preened, the time-consuming work that most birds must do every day to keep their feathers in good, functional shape. It was a simple problem, simply fixed.

We re-washed her. Within 24 hours she was fully waterproof. 48 hours after that, she was released, 300 grams heavier than when she was admitted, her wounds healed, and her life back on track. Her total time in care, with set backs: 15 days. The Eulachons, even with the problem, shaved a week off her recovery time. That’s simply too good to reject. So we amend our ways to accommodate the oil.
Using a very mild detergent and warm water, the Grebe was quickly washed. From here she was palced in a warm water pool where she essentially rinses herself, finishing the job. Another day of preening and she’ll back on top of her game. A hidden camera caught her as she works to reolve her feather issues in private. She also likes fish!

After another 48 hours in our pool, with modifications made to our system, she ate Eulachons and gained even more weight. After 2 weeks in care, she was released back to her wild freedom.





And then she was gone.  Our intimacy with her is done. She returns to her rightful place, out of our hands.

Right now we don’t have a choice. Eulachons, or river smelt, are what we can find. But even if we do have a choice, we’ll be sticking with the Eulachons. Our goal is to provide the best care, and good nutrition is cornerstone to that goal.

At our clinic in Bayside, with 1200 animals per year in care, we have the opportunity to elaborate on the gains made in aquatic bird care that emerged from high casualty marine disasters such as oil spills. We have the opportunity to develop strategies using our hard won knowledge to improve the care individual animals receive. Will Eulachons be a good fish choice to feed patients in an oil spill? Maybe, but we’d need to devise methods to improve water quality in ways that aren’t currently available. For individual patients, however, or for the much more common caseloads that coastal wildlife rehabilitators face daily, at our teaching hospital here on Humboldt Bay, we are doing the cutting edge work of improving the results of our care. Just as importantly, our efforts here don’t stop here. Through workshops and conferences we take the results of our work to other rehabilitators, demonstrating techniques and processes that they can use, on limited budgets, with limited resources. This necessary self-reliance seems to be the future of all rehabilitation work.

As we enter this period of dire uncertainty – with the Endangered Species Act under threat, with the Environmental Protection Agency openly attacked – in this terrible anti-bloom of the post-conservation era, our work is critical to the future of wildlife rehabilitation.

No matter how bad things become, no matter what night mare unfolds, wild animals will continue to suffer from human activity, human structures, and human caused problems such as quickly deteriorating ocean health. There will be those among us, today, tomorrow and as long as humans are present, who will be compelled to help. If we meet the challenges of our mission, those rehabilitators to come will have reliable information on how to provide good care.

Your support is the only thing that makes any of our work possible. Thank you!

All photos/videos Bird Ally X.

 

 

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Experiencing Turbulence: The Rough and Tumble Life of A Harlequin Duck

Posted on by Monte Merrick

Harlequin Ducks (Histrionicus histrionicus) are not typical. Through the Winter they prefer the rocky coast, foraging blithely among the smashing waves. Generally speaking, they’re unusual to see, not because they’re rare, but because waves smashing on rocks is not habitat that suits the human animal that much. Come Spring the Harlequin leaves our rocky coast and goes North to raise this year’s family in the thrashing and fast moving current of Arctic rivers and streams. All of this is why it took us a moment to identify the injured duck brought down from Crescent City in the middle of last month.

A female Harlequin, she’d suffered quite a trauma. Found among the minefield of rocks that makes up the beach on the North side of Crescent City, she had a severe laceration on the top of her head, and her left cheek was badly cut, part of her feathered face hanging loose.

Somehow she’d been battered. By the recent storms? By a dog unleashed? We’ll never know. We do know that she needed care and given her dark colors among the dark rocks, her small size and the vastness of the sea, she was very lucky that she was found.

The lacerations looked bad, but in fact, they were easily treated. Each of her limbs was intact; she was in  good health. We cleaned and dressed her wounds and prepared for the real task of her care: keeping a duck who loves the turbulent sea, fast moving water, and the freedom to dive against the rocks for her dinner of mollusks and crustacea in a calm pool in the middle of a small ranch a mile from the nearest saltwater.

Fortunately she accepted our diet of krill and small fish purchased at the pet store as a workable substitute for barnacles and tiny crabs.

A deep laceration on the Harlequin’s face would likely have lead to her death had she not been spotted and rescued.

While a Western grebe (Aechmophorus occidentalis) is not one of her own kind, housing patients with others, usually helps reduce the stress of their temporary captivity.

After more than three weeks in care, she was at last ready to go home. Her wounds fully healed, in good body condition, her blood work good, we took her to Trinidad. We are fortunate with most seabirds that they don’t rely on specific territory as much as bountiful habitat. We didn’t need to return her to Crescent City – she’s soon going leave our region for the high Arctic. With a sheltered ocean beach that is just a quick paddle around the corner to the open swell of the Pacific, Trinidad offers an excellent place to release oceanic birds that is also relatively safe for human caregivers to reach.

Please help us reach our March goal of $7000. Now is the time to prepare for our busy Spring and Summer season! We need you. Please Donate Here ]

Here is the sequence of photos from her release on March 8.

Searching beneath the waves…

And finding food!

At home again.

And here we left her: to her own life, her privacy, her autonomy, her wild and mysterious freedom to be the kind of duck she is. Our world is a many-roomed mansion, and we enter few of its doors. Yet our actions have impact everywhere. Even the Harlequin must be considered.

[ An interesting article on Harlequin Ducks and the 1989 Exxon Valdez Oil spill ]

From where this duck came and to where she will go, we’ll never know. Our concern, and what we can do, is make certain that she and her kind are able to freely live their lives. Your generosity made her success in rehabilitation possible.

Thank you for supporting the work of Bird Ally X and Humboldt Wildlife Care Center. Your love for the Wild makes a difference for thousands of our wild neighbors each year. Even those who you may never see.

All photos: Laura Corsiglia/Bird Ally X

 

 

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I Am Not Hazardous Waste, said the Bat

Posted on by Monte Merrick

Monday morning as staff rolled into the clinic to open for the day, a white pickup truck from the Humboldt Waste Management Authority was parked in our lot. Sure enough a few minutes later, an employee from the Eureka facility came though our door. She had a bat in a small cardboard box.

She said that someone had dropped off a bucket of used motor-oil soaked rags along with other hazardous waste from somewhere up in the hills east of the Bay. In that bucket there was also a Big Brown Bat (Eptesicus fuscus).

At first glance, the bat did not look good. He was completely covered in motor oil. We could barely detect his small, shallow breaths. We immediately placed him in our incubator, small box and all. Our incubator is kept ready 24/7 for exactly this reason. This patient needed heat and he needed it now, not when the thing was warmed up in a minute or five.

Soon he’d regained his composure, crawled from the box and was investigating the incubator. He was also trying to groom the oil from his fur with his tongue.

After he was sufficiently warmed and alert enough to be handled with less risk to his health, we prepared a quick bath for him to remove as much of the viscous motor oil as we could, before he licked more of it. Oil is bad for fur, bad for skin, and poison to eat.

During his post-bath examination he briefly escaped from our grasp and flew around the small examination room! This bat was ready to get it done.

He still had a bit of oil in his head, so a quick second bath was necessary. (photo at top of page is from his second bath)

The care board with the Big Brown Bat’s post-bath instructions.

After two days of rest, mealworms and regularly being misted to check his fur for cleanliness and function, that is, that he be clean of all oil and able to handle the actual world of rain and cold, we determined that he was ready for release.

This bat hated being misted. He hissed with rage!

A little damp but looking good!

While in care we tested the bat for parasites. He was negative – a perfectly healthy bat in a very bad situation!

Every month we need to reach a goal to keep our facility open and functioning. We need to raise $7000 this month, March, to meet our mission. Can you help? Please Donate Now Thank you!

Prepared for travel to his release site.

We released him with ample time before sundown and provided a ready-made hiding place so that he was safe until he had his bearings.

We only had a rough approximation of where he was from initially. We took him back to the area where the bucket had come from, hoping we were relatively close. This is not ideal, but without a more precise location, it was the best we could do. What we do know is that he came very close to meeting his fate in the bottom of one of the most stupid and ordinary things in the world – a barrel of society’s petroleum waste.

Thanks to you this bat had a place to go when in a bad situation. Imagine the initial surprise the people at Humboldt Waste Management Authority felt when first discovering him in the bucket of oily rags. If not for you, they would have had no recourse. Everyday, your support makes that difference. Thank you!


all photos: Bird Ally X

 

 

 

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Storm Battered Screech-Owl Secures Second Chance

Posted on by Monte Merrick

After the storms at the end of February raged across the North Coast, our caseload at Humboldt Wildlife Care Center saw many more battered birds. Collisions with rocks at sea, collisions with buildings – even frantic foraging during lulls in the wind and rain can cause otherwise cautious wild animals to take dangerous risks in order to eat. While we may never know what actually caused an injury, the treatment is often the same. Such was the case with this Western Screech-owl (Megascops kennicottii) who was brought in to our wildlife hospital the last week of February after being found in the middle of Murray Road, east of McKinleyville.

The small owl, presumed male, was in excellent body condition, had no broken bones, but his left eye was swollen closed. Fortunately his eye was in good shape, with just swollen tissue surrounding. So after only a few days of anti-inflammatory medicine, he was flying very well, and very stressed by captivity. While it doesn’t tell the whole story, a healthy wild animal is less tolerant of human caregivers than one who is weak, in shock, or otherwise debilitated.

[We need to raise $7000 in the month of March to stay on track for meeting the challenges of 2017! Please Help! You can donate here! Thanks!]

Soon, we were able to return this Owl to the neighborhood where he lives. There is no question that his chances for survival without someone who cared enough to get him help finding him was seriously jeopardized. Even an hour on the ground can be fatal for a bird, especially if the ground in question s a well used rural highway. Enjoy the photographs that tell the story of his release! Thanks for your support!

He flies very well!

Our aviary isn’t big enough for this Owl.

If he passes his release evaluation, this is the last time he’ll have to encounter the dreaded net.

Checking the progress of his wounded eye.

On the way to the release site…

Patient flying away – the best sight…

Thanks to you and your generous support, the folks who found this owl were able to find us. And thanks to the care that your support allows us to provide, there will be another Screech-owl in the Redwoods this Spring, preparing to raise another clutch of owlets with his mate. With our help, they’ll make sure there’ll always be Screech-owls in our forests.


All photos: Bird Ally X/Laura Corsiglia

 

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