Author: Monte Merrick

New Study Shows Very Common Pesticides Disrupt Migratory Birds’ Sense of Direction.

Posted on by Monte Merrick

Many songbird populations are in steep decline. These losses have many well known causes – free-roaming house cats, buildings and cars loom large as threats – yet some of the causes remain a mystery. An alarming study published November 2017 in the journal Nature has confirmed that two of the most common pesticides in widespread use in North America and elsewhere are a very significant part of the problem. The study shows that both chemicals significantly impair exposed White-crowned Sparrows (Zonotrichia leucophrys) ability to orient directionally; – a disability which would have obvious negative impact on a migrating songbird. One of the chemicals in the study also caused significant loss of body mass, also imperiling birds during migration. Impact to populations is not in the scope of this study, but the impairments that were shown, and the likelihood that these risks would be at their most threatening when Spring migration and industrial seed sowing coincide, it is easy to extrapolate the serious and tragic consequences.

Imagine landing in a freshly sown field somewhere between your gentle winter home and the fulsome days of summer – the field the only resource left after the prairies and forests were industrialized by farming – and as soon as you eat you begin to forget your way, where you were going, perhaps even why. If the poison is also causing you to starve, well, you won’t last long – a very dim bright side. In neither case will you make it out of there – make it to your destination, the place where you and your mate get about the business of bringing the next generation of your kind into the world…

A White-crowned Sparrow nestling/fledgling in care at HWCC is examined after admission. Too old to keep in the nest, too young to fly, this bird was was successfully returned to her parents. 

Songbirds moving north are on a mission – the mission of life. Exposed to these poisons, instead they stagger, lost in the vast sea of a chemically restrained Mother Earth, like Dorothy, the Tinman, the Lion, and the Scarecrow, but not done in by the poppies, but rather the chemicals that had been sprayed on them to kill all adjacent life.

For both chemicals in the study it took 2 or more weeks after their last exposure while being maintained in captivity, for the birds who were subjected to the toxin to recover their lost weight and their lost sense of direction.*** Of course, given the nature of agriculture across the so-called heart land, there is no such thing as a real-world post-exposure period of convalescence, outside of potential intervention by wildlife rehabilitators, – a shot in the dark.

White-crowned Sparrow at HWCC enjoys a mealworm before be taken back to her family.

The two pesticides in the study are both in very wide use, especially in the US, yet are also controversial for the links that have been shown between them and observed health impacts for people and wildlife. One, imidacloprid , is a neonicotinoid, such as are currently implicated as a factor in bee colony collapse disorder, among other concerns, and the other, chlorpyrifos, is an organophosphate with its own checkered past. Banned by the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), after a significant legal process, at the end of 2016, under the new administration, Scott Pruitt, the new head of the Trump administration’s EPA (TEPA), reversed the process of banning the pesticide.

Neonicotinoids in high concentrations have already been shown to be among the causes of population decline in insect-eating songbirds, now this study shows that even very small amounts – the amount found on one treated seed – can impair songbirds during the most critical time in their lives, when they are migrating to their breeding grounds.

The threats posed to songbirds by society are extreme. Our human built world, in multiple ways, kills songbirds in the billions annually in just the US alone!

Human-caused avian mortality ranked by deaths annually.
 https://www.fws.gov/birds/bird-enthusiasts/threats-to-birds.php

How many songbirds are killed by these two chemicals alone is not yet known. But what we do know, is that the problem is huge and the very pinnacle of executive power in this nation, at least, is unconcerned, to say the least, about the fate of wild birds. If nothing else this means that co-existing, peacefully, with our wild neighbors, and the wild in whole, is always more urgent. As long as our civilization continues to advance in the direction of death and extinction, hope lies in the actions we make locally, on the ground, literally in our own backyards.

A fledgling White-crowned Sparrow successfully reunited with parents by HWCC/BAX staff.

There are many things on the list of threats to songbirds that we can reduce as we work toward eliminating, today, right now. We can respect all nests. We can keep our cats indoors (bonus, it’s better for cats, too!!!) We can stop trimming branches during nesting season. We can plant bird friendly native plants. We can slow down when we drive and we can drive less. We can help out individuals when they’re in need. That’s the primary thing that we do – help out our individual wild neighbors whenever they get caught in a jam.

Your support makes our work possible. Even if the worst befalls us, still we’ll need to care for the innocent wild victims who suffer from of our mistakes, accidents and thoughtless greed. Our wild neighbors will always need you to help when society, in ascendancy or ruin, does its dirty work. Thank you for being here. Thank you for keeping our doors open.

 

*** For the record, the kind of experiment performed that got these results is not endorsed by Bird Ally X. The pesticides in question have been long known to disrupt the ecological systems into which they are introduced – deliberately imperiling the lives of White-crowned Sparrows, without their consent, is not a right that people have, regardless of their intentions. This information, if it is critical to have in order to make decisions, which is anything but a foregone conclusion, must be gotten in ways that don’t violate the rights of others. Study subjects have the same rights to their independent autonomy and ownership of their own bodies that humans are supposed to have .

It’s hard to find the ground to stand on which might allow us to see whose freedom is meaningful and whose is not. We need a much clearer view of the world and our place within the living network we share. It is a common belief in public service that citizens are to be protected from “false negatives” – that is, finding no harm detected where harm does in fact exist. Our modern history is rife with examples of false negatives being foisted on an unsuspecting public with disastrous result: automobile safety, tobacco use, radioactive fallout, DDT, the list is endless. False positives, attributing observed harm to the study object in error, may be frustrating to those who want to advance on some project, or inject the latest fad into farmed fish, but it is the proponent’s obligation to prove those positives as false – it is not the public nor the agencies charged with protecting the public’s health, well-being, and rights, mission, let alone obligation, to protect companies and governing bodies from the demands of due diligence. At least the same respect is owed to the autonomous lives of our wild neighbors. We must consider them as sentient and with the same rights of existence as our own. It is the burden of those who would capture, kill, plunder, poison, for reasons noble to foul to demonstrate that consent is not needed…

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Thayer’s Gull Turns Life Around

Posted on by Monte Merrick

Every winter Humboldt Wildlife Care Center/BAX admits several gulls with injuries – usually from being struck by a vehicle. So when we got a call on the third day of the new year from someone in Eureka who’d found a gull not able to fly in her backyard, we figured it would be another case of a wing smashed in traffic. We drove over and picked up the bird, who turned out to be a juvenile Thayer’s Gull (Larus thayeri). Not the most common gull in our area, they breed high in the Arctic but are fairly regular visitors to our coast during Winter months. We’ve treated several over the years.

Once we had this bird back at our hospital, an initial examination found a bird with no obvious injuries, but definitely favoring her or his left wing – no fractured bones, no swelling, just an apparent weakness on that side, shown by an asymmetrical carriage of the wings.

We also detected that this young bird’s jaw had been fractured, but had healed in place, with a slight misalignment. The lower bill (mandible) didn’t quite sit right in the upper bill (maxilla). Although this might seem to be a minor problem, nearly all of a bird’s ability to keep their feathers in good, functional shape, critical for survival, is done using the beak. Preening – that is, cleaning, adjusting, realigning feathers that are out of place – is critical for a bird to able to withstand the elements, especially here on the North Coast with our stormy winters.

So we housed this gull, otherwise healthy, in an outdoor aviary with access to a pool. While we waited for the undetectable soft-tissue injury that was preventing flight to heal, we would learn if this gull could maintain her or his feathers in an outdoor winter setting.

The answer was yes. Through the various storms of January, our patient stayed warm, dry and looking good, feathers unruffled, spirit unflappable. S/he was a major fish enthusiast, eating everything offered in short order. Convincing a bird to eat in captivity can sometimes be challenging, but this gull knew the meaning of a plate of night smelt (Spirinchus starksi), the fish of choice that we feed most of our piscivore patients.

After 10 days, the gull began making short flights, using both wings, that gave care providers a reason for optimism. By 2 weeks, the gull was flying from perch to perch in our large aviary, clearly on the re-bound. After a few more days of strong flight in our aviary, we checked over the patient one more time. Everything looked terrific – blood values perfect, weight  normal, body condition fantastic, attitude fierce, and desire to get as far from us perfectly intact. So we put Larus thayeri one last time into a box and then into a car and down to the edge of Humboldt Bay where this bird became our patient no more forever!

You hope they go one way, but wild animals don’t care what we hope!

Dedicated volunteer says, “gull!” – Gull says, “duck!”

Landing several feet away, giving us the “look”…

And then it’s time to go…

So often with gull releases, they fly back to the release site, swoop around, check us out. Just as we are intensely interested in their world, perhaps they are also curious about ours.

Drinking the bay! Like most birds that live near saline water, gulls have a gland that allows them to eliminate the salt.

There is nothing like the sight of a patient flying away.

The injuries this gull suffered were relatively minor and really healed on their own. What we provided was a safe haven. It is very likely that the two weeks of rest needed, the two weeks of being unable to fly, would have been the end for this young bird without help. But such wasn’t the case. The gull’s collision with the casual violence of human civilization didn’t end in death because we were here. Just like everyday. And we’re here because of one reason only: your support. Thank you for keeping our doors open. You make a difference for wildlife. If you’d like to help, please donate today.

photos: Laura Corsiglia/BAX

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7 in 10 Endangered Spotted Owls Exposed to Rat Poison, Retail Ban Insufficient

Posted on by Monte Merrick

In 2014, the State of California banned the rat poison that had been increasingly causing sickness and death in wild animals, second generation anti-coagulant rodenticides (SGARs), sold in retail stores as D-con. Although the California Department of Fish and Wildlife had submitted an opinion that the rodenticide needed to be more tightly regulated, it still took 3 years to get the toxin off the shelves of neighborhood stores. However, the ban was not total. Commercial applicators and farmers can still buy and use this poison – and they do.

Killing rats with a slow acting poison, as it turns out, is a very effective way to spread poison through an ecosystem. Rats sick and dying from ingesting rodenticide are caught by wild predators – raccoons, bobcats, mountain lions, eagles, hawks, weasels, – anyone who eats rodents.

Now a newly published study shows that 70% of Northern Spotted Owls (Strix occidentalis) on the North Coast, in the heart of the coastal range forests, where cannabis cultivation has punched holes and created edges, tested positive for rodenticide exposure. Unfortunately, this means that our region is now close to par with the rest of California. An ongoing study in the San Francisco Bay Area undertaken by Wildcare in Marin County has found 83% (updated) of all wildlife tested to be exposed to SGARs. No doubt similar numbers are found in other states and nations.

The world is poisoned. It has been for a long time. From the the first coal mines of Appalachia through the daily spew of burned gasoline and pesticides and even radiation from Fukushima’s ongoing catastrophe, civilization has brought its poisons everywhere it expands. If our civilization lasts to colonize Mars it will bring its poisons there too. From plastics in the oceans to radioactive isotopes in milk, this news is old.

The solutions to humane and effective rodent control are many and require some thought and effort. Thought and effort are exactly what use of poisons seeks to avoid. The impacts to our world from such short-cut seeking are obvious and staggering. Still, the solutions aren’t that difficult. First, conflicts with wild animals, even non-native wild animals like Norway rats, are almost always created by a human housekeeping issue. Feeding pets outdoors, unprotected food storage, unprotected compost bins that aren’t rat-proofed, materials and debris piles around outbuildings, and more all contribute to rodent problems. Good housekeeping solves a lot of the problem. Putting up an owl box can also be useful. Encouraging raptors in your area will also help. Barn owls, Great-horned owls, Red-tailed hawks and others eat rodents for a living! If you have a problem with rats, there are myriad humane and ecologically sound resources available. (see below for resources that can help)

It’s an old formula and in many ways it’s still true: the solution to pollution is dilution. Other measures might be useful to get rodenticides out of our ecosystem, out of of the wild, out of our wild neighbors. Hopefully the legalization of cannabis in California will bring cannabis agriculture into the regulatory process. Maybe legalization will lead to the migration of cannabis agriculture out of remote wildlands and away from sensitive species such as the Pacific Fisher (Martes pennanti)and the Northern Spotted Owl, an icon of the struggle to preserve the Redwoods and the temperate rainforest to our north. But even if that happens, those measures do nothing to dilute the pollutant – to reduce the number of animals exposed to this poison.

Submission to regulatory review isn’t enough. The rat poison put out by a worker at a vineyard in Napa or Sonoma counties is likely legal. When vast swaths of our world are taken over by industrial agriculture, we cannot simply allow that land, its waters, its life, to become a sacrifice zone. If we are serious about diluting rat poison out of our environment, we need to stop producing it. We need to cease manufacture and sales of these poisons.

Update: In 2017, a leader in the effort to rid our shared world of these poisons, Raptors Are the Solution (RATS), worked with California Assembly member Richard Bloom, whose district (50) includes Santa Monica, Malibu, Topanga, West Los Angeles and Pacific Palisades, to bring a bill (AS-1687) forward that would complete the ban of SGARs in our state. It is currently stalled in the Assembly committee, Environmental Safety and Toxic Materials (ETSM). The bill as it is currently written would ban all use of SGARs except

 (1)  This section does not apply to the use of pesticides for agricultural activities, as defined in Section 564. … “agricultural activities” include activities conducted in any of the following locations:

(A) Warehouses used to store foods for human or animal consumption.
(B) Agricultural food production sites, including, but not limited to, slaughterhouses and canneries.
(C) Factories, breweries, wineries, or any other location where rodent or pest populations need to be controlled for food safety or agricultural purposes.

At the time of writing it is unknown if the bill will make it out of committee in time for this legislative year. If it does, we’ll keep you posted on actions that you can take to support its passage. For now, we are working to build strong support here on the North Coast, where we treasure our wildlands and wild neighbors, to eliminate these toxins from our shared world, our wild mother.

Want to help? One, contact your representative in the Assembly and let them know that you stand with our wild neighbors and want second generation anti-coagulant poisons fully banned. Here in the second district, you can send a message to our Assemblymember, Jim Wood. Two, help us build support here, in the heart of the Redwoods, where the Spotted Owls for too long has served as a bellwether of the costs our forests and forest communities pay for harmful human practices. You can become intimately involved with protecting our wild neighbors by volunteering at HWCC.

You can help us care for wild animals impacted by the toxins of a human built world, as well as advocate on behalf of our wild neighbors. Please donate today! Thank you!

In the Humboldt area and looking for advice on a local problem? call our clinic 707 822 8839. We can help!

Raptors Are The Solution (RATS) has a great web page with tips and links.

http://www.raptorsarethesolution.org/alternatives-tips-print-friendly/

The Hungry Owl Project also has good information, especially regarding encouraging owls to nest in your area.

https://www.hungryowl.org/nontoxic-rodent-control/

 

 

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Skunk’s Got White Stripes

Posted on by Monte Merrick

That don’t mean she’s the road to town
Skunk’s got white stripes
That don’t mean she’s the road to town
Just trying to find her lover
Everybody’s got to run her down

Every year the same thrilling tale that Nature has told since time immemorial ends in tragedy for many female Striped Skunks (Mephitis mephitis). In January here in Humboldt (as late as end of February for less temperate areas) female skunks begin to look for a mate. Their evenings are no longer spent watching over any remaining youngsters from the previous year. No longer content to saunter the night time world looking for food and whatever sparks her curiosity, now she is driven. The force of Spring renewal is powerful thing, sending her across fields and forests and very unfortunately, across roads too.

Three days ago, we admitted our first adult female skunk of 2018, who’d likely been hit by a car. Paralyzed and barely conscious, a quick, humane end was the only appropriate care. We rarely admit a skunk who’s been hit by a car simply because they rarely live through the impact. Instead, each January we see a sudden increase in skunks, dead and left to rot by the sides of our roads, from US 101 to the small two lane black tops that criss-cross the agricultural industry of the bottom lands. Samoa Blvd, from Arcata through Manila and south to North Jetty, on a these mid-winter days might have as many as four skunks freshly killed to be seen on the morning commute.

Accidents happen. Many of us can tell a story of hitting a bird, or a squirrel, or a raccoon without warning, with no chance to avoid the impact. It’s a terrible thing. The finality of it – and in the moment, the realized cost – this Swainson’s Thrush had crossed thousands of miles to be here to raise this year’s young, but no, instead, he’s lodged in the bumper of a car that had been speeding along with coffee creamer and a few other things that had been needed at the store. The casual slaughter of billions of wild animals each year by automobile is just another tragedy woven through the fabric of our daily lives.

In the last 12 months, how many Raccoons between Arcata and Manila, between Ferndale and Fernbridge, between Bayside and Freshwater, between Redding and Sacramento were struck and killed and left to bloat and decay by the side of the road, or worse, lure another animal, a Turkey Vulture perhaps, into the same trap. It’s a measure of how far below our concern these lives are, that we can tolerate their dead bodies lying on the margins of our thoroughfares decomposing where they were killed.

It must be the case that many animals are killed simply because we don’t see them, because we never see them. We don’t include them in our ideas about what might happen. We race through the dark as if the world was closed and nothing is real but the road, our headlights, our thoughts and the dark cavern of the sky. And the Road Runner startled by our engine’s roar dashes from the sage into our trajectory, smashed in the night by the predator who never eats – to be mourned if at all, only in the form of young who may have been orphaned to die, and the great sorrow of the Earth which is too large to hear – the Earth who reels in the blood of her freshest wounds and heals as she can from wounds long inflicted – strip mines, factory trawlers, pesticides sprayed across the plains, rivers choked…

There are so many wounds in the world today. Mudslides have killed at least 18 people in Santa Barbara County. In California alone, people in the last year have suffered one catastrophic calamity after another, in a world where greater disaster seems to always loom on the near horizon. It seems that there is little we can do about these wounds on this scale. But it’s simply not true.

Against these tragedies, we have a remedy. This remedy may not lower the temperature but will make the world where we are more beautiful, more just. Dr. King said that the moral arc of the universe bends toward justice, and we can do part of that bending right here, right now, in our tangible world and literally where the rubber meets the road. We can slow down and open our eyes. We can anticipate that we are not alone, free to tread where we will, to pay no regard to who is left broken or killed in our wake.We can find the joy in the nocturnal wild and search for their glowing eyes. We can stop teaching our sons violence as a form of play, violence as a right of passage – to respect the other lives, minds, hearts who they encounter. Far too many patients we’ve admitted were witnessed being run down intentionally, almost always a young man at the wheel. We can teach our sons now what it means to value the soul of another.

The world is made in moments and in each moment we can remember our first loyalty – to Earth and the wild. We can learn to undo our overly built confidence in the machinery of our times and re-align with our wild neighbors, our fellow travelers through this life on Earth, or kith, our kin; -our measured distance surmountable in a leap of recognition, not faith. We can give safe passage to this skunk here now, who is crossing the road, so that she might find who she needs, so that the world is refreshed, so that her young come to be.

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A Barn Owl’s Broken Wing Heals

Posted on by Monte Merrick

Like most years, this winter Humboldt Wildlife Care Center has seen a significant increase in owls admitted for care that have been hit by a vehicle.

Very often the injuries to a Barn Owl (Tyto alba) after being hit by a car are too severe for successful treatment. There is simply no chance that the injury will heal, fully recovered. The bird will never be able to be returned to the wild and free life which is their birth right. It’s a tragic thing to admit an owl, in perfect body condition, at the prime of adulthood, but with a humerus no longer attached to the clavicle, ligaments torn, the shoulder joint torn apart, no longer able to use that wing forever.

Sometimes though, a Barn Owl gets a little bit of luck.

In mid-December, a Barn Owl was hit by car on US 101 in Arcata where the highway runs past the Mad River bottoms. Bottom land, such as we find all around Humboldt Bay, is perfect habitat for rodent-eating Barn Owls. Most of the Barn Owls we admit who’ve been hit by a car come to us from places where higher speed traffic cuts through the flat ranch lands of Arcata, Hydesville, Ferndale, and Loleta.

This Barn Owl, like many who are admitted after being hit by a car, suffered a wing fracture, rendering her unable to fly. Because of her size, at the upper end of the 400-550 gram weight range typical for her species, we assumed her to be female.

The fracture was in a tricky spot. Bird wings, forelimbs evolved for flight, have bones that are fairly analogous to our arms. Like all mammals and birds, Owls have a humerus that is connected to a clavicle (collar-bone), scapula (shoulder blade) and a coracoid (only birds have this bone, which provides support for the powerful downstroke of a beating wing and is not palpable). These bones come together in a mass of complex muscles and ligaments that form a shoulder that is capable of flight. Any of these bones can be fractured and recovery might still be possible, but dislocating bones from this joint, causing soft tissue trauma, ends in a patient who will never fly again. The functioning of this joint must be perfect or flight isn’t possible. Unfortunately, many birds suffer traumatic injuries to this joint when struck by vehicles or by collisions with buildings, usually a window.

Humerus fractures can be a problem because powerful flight muscles make it difficult to preserve alignment of the pieces of bone while they heal – usually this type of fracture requires surgery – a pin or some other kind of fixator must be used for the bone to heal properly. When presented with injuries like this, we often will send our patient south to Pacific Wildlife Care in Morro Bay, where Dr. Shannon Riggs, a highly skilled wild avian orthopedic surgeon who is also a BAX co-founder, works as Director of Animal Care.

After the humerus, just as with human anatomy, a radius and ulna make up the “forewing” after the elbow just as we have a forearm. Fractures to these bones run the range of easily healed with no problems, a complete return to function, all the way to broken beyond repair with no hope for recovery. The distance of the fracture from a joint, in this case the elbow or wrist, is an important consideration. Too close to a joint and a healed fracture might interfere with the range of motion, making flight impossible.

Beyond the wrist there are a couple of fused bones, the major and minor metacarpals, which are analogous to the bones between our fingers and our wrist. Next are three bones in sequence, vestigial digits after evolving for flight. The primary feathers, critical for controlled flight, attach to the wing along the digits. For mobility, lift, control and steering, the digits play a crucial role. At one time, fractures to the metacarpals and digits were not considered treatable. Fortunately, a splinting technique was developed that has changed that. It’s a splint that we use successfully several times a year.

This owl’s left wing, far beyond her wrist, was broken at the tip of her third digit. We stabilized the fracture with the splint that had been developed especially for this type of fracture. Using a piece of bandage material specifically for splints in conjunction with the rigid flight feathers to immobilize the fracture site while allowing freedom of movement to eat and perch, the splinted wing is held in place with a traditional wing wrap. We talked with Dr. Riggs about treatment, encouraged that fractured bone of the digit would heal much more readily than connective soft tissue.

The first examination also revealed that the owl was not able to stand fully, her left leg, no doubt the impact side, was much weaker than her right. Nothing broken was found in her leg, but swelling was present. Still, as injuries go, this owl was luckier than most in her situation. With splint applied, anti-inflammatory pain meds given, and some thawed out mice, her time in care began.

On a specially prepared perch that reduces captivity related problems such as pressure sores that can develop on the bottoms of a bird’s feet when spending much more time than usual standing and not flying. Perching and other housing choices are an important part of providing effective care. Knowing the natural history of many different wild species is critical if we are to treat patients appropriate to their needs.

In our large aviary (the Merry Maloney Raptor Housing)  after getting her splint removed, the Barn Owl exhibits very good flight! 

Captured for a routine exam, we are careful not to let these feet, both the tools of her trade and her only real defense against the likes of us, grab us. Tough enough to kill a large rodent, she’d cause some serious damage to a caregiver’s hand if we didn’t treat her talons with respect.

Silently swooping across the crepuscular sky, a Barn Owl is a swift and effective hunter. Even in an aviary, this owl’s flight was awe-inspiring.

The swelling in her left leg and her reluctance to use it improved immediately. Within a few days she was perching normally, able to hop around her housing, albeit with one wing tied behind her back.

An advantage that birds have over mammals is their much greater metabolism, which means that they heal much more quickly. Break a finger skiing and you’ll be in a splint for six weeks, while birds will heal in two! After 12 days, we partially removed the splint to check the progress of healing. The fracture site was nearly stable. We re-applied the splint and set her up for another check five days later, cautiously allowing a few more days than is normally required. Meanwhile, her attitude was becoming more fierce. After 17 days, the fracture site was was fully stable. We removed the splint and took her to an outdoor aviary. Immediately she took off n flight and flew around a corner and out of our view. We brought her some mice and left her alone. In a few days, after observing her flight in the aviary, we examined her one more time. In very good health, strong and fully recovered we released her back to bottom lands she hunts.

That moment when the patient realizes she is free and acts on it is a moment like no other.
Across the field…
And up toward the trees…


Putting as much distance between us as she can before stopping…

She alights on branches at the top of these tall alders and looks back toward us, toward her captors… does she know we helped? Who knows? It doesn’t matter. What matters is that she is free, using a second chance that was given her and this is the last of her looking back…
And then she leapt back into flight and was gone… returned to her wild freedom in the real world.

Wildlife rehabilitation is at least as old as human compassion, but as a profession it’s been less than 50 years that rehabilitators have been using trainings, regulations, and professional associations to improve available care for injured and orphaned wildlife all over the country. Innovations like the splint that gave this owl her second chance are made because of support generously donated. These innovations and improvements are passed on to other caregivers and are taught to the next generation of rehabilitators using the resources that your support provides. This Barn Owl is hunting the night-time world of the bottoms surrounding northern Humboldt Bay thanks to you making sure that we are here, doors open and ready.

Barn Owls are awesome and fortunately easily observed. But it’s their proximity to us, to the hazards of our modern world that are nothing but traps to animals evolved to the standards of Mother Earth, not industrial mechanized society  that are the greatest threat. It’s up to us to do what we can to slow down, be aware of the dangers we present to wild animals and modify our actions when we can. Co-existing with Barn Owls: it’s only natural.


 

all photos: Laura Corsiglia/BAX

 

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Raccoons Make End of Year Deadline: Free in 2017!

Posted on by Monte Merrick

The last orphaned Raccoons (Procyon lotor) treated at Humboldt Wildlife Care Center were released on New Year’s Eve, ensuring that these youngsters returned to wild freedom before the ball fell on the year… (note: there is no evidence that raccoons care even a little bit about calendars or clocks).

Both raccoons were late season babies in a year that saw significant departures from our normal caseload – a huge increase in mammal babies as well as an extended season that lasted over a month longer than past years.

One raccoon, a female, was brought to us in early October, weighing only 450 grams, very skinny, with an infection that left both of her eyes crusted shut and heavy congestion. She was only about 4 weeks old, with teeth just beginning to emerge. Her first day in care was nearly her last due to the severity of her condition. She’d been alone for many days after her mother and siblings had been illegally trapped. Severely dehydrated and malnourished, still she showed remarkable strength. She responded quickly to the antibiotics we gave her. The fluids and milk replacer also did their part. Soon she was in good body condition, well hydrated and full of spitting fury.

Our concern that she would be alone for most of her care was alleviated when we admitted another raccoon at the beginning of December. This one, a male, was the same size and at the same stage of development as our female orphan. He was brought to us after being found lingering at the back door of a restaurant, where some were feeding him scraps.

Both raccoons were served by the other’s company. Having a buddy, if you’re a raccoon too young to be on your own, helps reduce stress and promotes well being – play is critical for learning. Raccoons playing together learn about the natural diet items that we provide and playing together encourages them to eat. Play is critical for developing physical skills like climbing. While we don’t wish for patients, admitting the male in early December really helped the female, and having the female in care already was a boon to the male, once his quarantine was over.

We check the weights and development of our orphaned raccoons every two weeks, striking a balance between our need to monitor their progress and their need for privacy and the protection of their wild hearts. By mid-December, we knew that their next check-up would be on New Year’s Eve and we knew that they were likely to be ready to go at that time. When the day arrived, both raccoons passed their release evaluation and were taken to a very nice spot for a young raccoon to enter the Wild, a place remote from human houses, in a healthy ecosystem with a lot of excellent food.

Evaluation for release includes behavior such as wild food recognition and fear of people, physically, each raccoon must be in good health and fully functional, and a weight check – raccoons must be a certain size before they can considered for release.

In our raccoon housing, we have an artificial river which we use to help them learn that fish and other aquatic creatures are delicious and found in water. When taken to a real river, they know what to do!

Exploring the new world takes time… both raccoons exhibited a very cautious approach after they came out of their carriers. Studies have shown that wild animals who approach novel situations with caution and even fear, do better at avoiding the dangers of the human-built world. Protecting the wildness of our patients is as important as treating their injuries. 

Our last glimpse of these raccoons before they left for the surrounding Wild… and excellent way to close out the year!

Caring for raccoons is challenging and rewarding. Raccoons are very intelligent and seek mental stimulation. Keeping them wild and fearful of humans is difficult – they’re smart enough to read our actions. So we adopt a hands off approach once they are weaned. Our housing is designed to be a teacher – a safe place to explore an imitation wild environment, complete with moving water, grasses, hidden insects, eggs, prey items, and fruits (mostly zucchini!) that we put in branches they must climb to reach.  We’re proud of the raccoons who graduate from our school! And we’re grateful to all who support our work and make our raccoon program the success that it is!

Now our raccoon housing is empty, which gives us the needed time to make repairs and improvements for our next season which is only four months away! Want to help us out? Donate today! Thank you!!


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Happy New Year! A greeting from Humboldt Wildlife Care Center’s Assistant Rehabilitation Manager!

Posted on by Monte Merrick

Happy New Year to everyone! Please welcome Lucinda Adamson, assistant rehabilitation manager at HWCC, writing her first post for the Bird Ally X website!

As the holiday season unfolds, things are getting quiet around the clinic. Many long time volunteers are away visiting family and friends for the holidays. And the phone rings less often than it used to, hopefully that means fewer animals are getting hurt.

There is still a lot of work to be done and thankfully not everyone travels for the holidays. Several new volunteers are just starting out after recently completing their orientation. (Find out how you can volunteer here.) They are quickly learning the meaning behind one of our sayings we have around here – housekeeping is animal care.

Several patients were recently released. Yay, Freedom for the Holidays!! Now we clean aviaries, siphon pools and repair leaks, tidy up the outdoor space and deep clean the indoor rooms. And all too soon we start thinking about what necessary repairs and additions must be made before orphaned baby seasons starts anew.

As I type this, I periodically check on an injured Glaucous-winged Gull (Larus glaucescens) floating in a therapy pool. Admitted just yesterday too thin and weak to stand up on his own, the warm water provides a chance at recovery and some small comfort in the otherwise stressful world of captivity. And I pause to answer the phone: responding to calls about injured deer, a hawk hit by a car, a sparrow who collided with a window, and providing advice on how to safely and humanely prevent a river otter from utilizing a koi pond as an easy dinner buffet.

In the room across the hall, an American Robin (Turdus migratorius) fights for her life. Suffering puncture wounds, feather loss, and a broken clavicle. We will never know exactly what caused her injuries but they are most consistent with a cat attack. Thanks to the vigilant community member who recognized something was wrong when the robin wouldn’t fly, she now has a chance of recovering. If all goes well, she’ll be in our care for 2-3 weeks and find freedom again in the new year.

Injury and need for care don’t take a holiday. The Humboldt Wildlife Care Center is open every day of the year. If you find an injured wild animal, please call our clinic right away 707-822-8839.

Thank you for your support. Your support has ensured that the one thousand one hundred and fifty-six animals we treated in 2017 had a place to go in their time of need. Your support really does make a difference for wildlife.

If you would like to donate to support our work, you can follow this link to our 2017 Holiday Card here.

Happy New Year!

Lucinda Adamson
Lucinda Adamson at work on a Summer day…
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Ring-Billed Gull Beats the Parking Lot

Posted on by Monte Merrick

Every year Humboldt Wildlife Care Center admits nearly 100 gulls of various species. Many of these gulls are injured beyond all help but a humane end to their suffering. The most common causes of injuries to gulls are trucks and cars, and the most dangerous place, it seems, are the parking lots of area shopping centers.

It seems strange that parking lots would be the most dangerous, since traffic in lots is already very slow, the presence of children and people pushing carts would make driver’s more aware and able to avoid collisions with gulls and other birds. Of course, we’ve all witnessed the sad fact of young men trying to run down pigeons and gulls in parking lots with their vehicles. Purposefully trying to hit wild animals with a vehicle is an act of senseless cruelty and a troubling sign. While we don’t know if many of the gulls we treat suffered intentional cruelty, whenever we admit an animal found in a parking lot, we wonder even if we’ll never know. What we do know is that a large number of those gulls don’t make it.

A few days ago, however, we admitted a Ring-Billed Gull (Larus delawarensis) who’d been found on the ground, barely able to move, unable to stand in the parking lot for a shopping center on Broadway Avenue in Eureka. At first we were concerned that the gull had been hit hard enough to fracture his or her spine. But both feet were responsive to touch.

With no palpable fractures, we assumed either acute toxicity, or a collision that had cause swelling. Treated with fluids and anti-inflammatory medicine, the gull soon was standing again.

Recovery was fast. After a few days in our aviary, the gull was flying very well and ready for freedom. The following photos are in sequence from the today’s release. The gull leapt from the carrier and never touched the ground…

A nice way to end a challenging year! A gull’s second chance in a dangerous world!

Your support means that this gull, one of the last patients released in 2017, who would’ve died last week, vulnerable and wounded on an acre of pavement where people stash their cars while shopping for trinkets, an all too common fate, instead is flying above Humboldt Bay, free right now, using a second chance that your generosity provided. Our human-built world takes little heed of our wild neighbors. Your support helps fix that problem, case by case, one wild neighbor at a time.

Thank you for supporting our work in 2017. From all of us at HWCC/BAX Have a wonderful and safe New Year’s Eve and we’ll see you tomorrow, as we enter 2018 with an open door for our wild neighbors. Thank you.

photos: Bird Ally X/ Laura Corsiglia

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A Challenging Year Ends, A New Year’s Promise

Posted on by Monte Merrick

A tumultuous year, 2017 has been. We’re glad to reach the finish line! Challenging though it was, we are here today because of your support. Because of your support, our chief project, Humboldt Wildlife Care Center is open 7 days a week, every day of the year. Because of your support we’ve never turned away a wild neighbor in need. Because of your support, we’ve met the needs of 1,154 patients so far (on 12/30/17). Your support provided treatment for nearly 100 Hawks and Owls and over 400 Songbirds. From Mallards to Sandpipers to Common Loons, your support provided the specialized housing that our 256 aquatic bird patients required. We treated over 350 mammals – orphaned Raccoons, Gray Fox, a neonatal Little Brown Bat, a Coyote pup, juvenile Douglas squirrels, nearly 40 skunks, litters of Opossums, – Deer mice and voles. Your support kept us open to be there to help two dozen adult Raccoons, Opossums and Skunks find a humane end after being mangled beyond hope by a truck or a car.

The challenges to our communities this year have at times felt pretty dangerous, veering from harm to vulnerable people and families to risks so terrible – climate change, environmental collapse, geopolitical tensions, and more – that they seem to threaten our collective existence. For many this is a brand new challenge. For many this is a re-telling of their loss – of land, of life, of language, of standing in a dominating society. For the wild, in her extreme diversity, this is the story of her interactions with civilization since the first forests were sacrificed to build ships of war.

Threats to the wild rarely stop. This last weekend of the year among other things, we learn that established rules of safety for offshore oil drilling and fracking will be rescinded. The killing of birds by the various energy industries will no longer be considered a violation of the Migratory Bird Treaty Act, weakening the enforcement of a century old law that has yet to fulfill its promise.

Wild lands, like the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, whose protection has been a constant battle for decades, are opened now for plunder. To be free, wild animals need a place to be. Habitat loss, along with buildings, cats and cars are the biggest threats facing wild animals today. These cause the most harm to populations and they are the top reasons that patients are admitted to HWCC.

It is certainly not a recent observation that industry has wreaked havoc on the wild world. Our beloved Henry David Thoreau, in 1861, consoling himself that while the forests of Concord had been mowed down that at least, “men cannot fly and lay waste the sky as well as earth,” yet here we are 150 years on and the naiveté of that sentiment, that somehow the sky would be safe, is little more than a tragic joke.

The fight to protect the air, the sea, the land – to preserve these necessary things – we were hardly near winning before last year, but now it’s impossible to not fear the naked aggression against the natural world on current display.

It’s been reported that the tax on each barrel of oil that goes into the federal fund for spill cleanup, including wildlife rescue and rehabilitation, for use when there is no known responsible party, or in circumstances when the responsible party lacks the ability to pay for the clean up, will expire at the end of 2017 with no plan to renew it.

The notion that we pay for what we damage is both a homily of our daily lives and a hard fought right that our victims have a hard time making stick. Only for wildlife injured in an oil spill is there a mandate that they be given care and restored to their lives to the best of our ability. On a case by case basis this or that industry might be forced to help rehabilitate the birds who survive whatever fresh hell they’ve brought to some corner of the earth – a meat packing plant might be forced to pay for the care of the gulls who were sickened by uncovered waste –  an agri-business might have to pay for the care of displaced chicks caused by mowing a rice field while nesting White-faced Ibis were present. Or they might not.

Your support is critical. HWCC, our education programs, and our humane solutions program to peacefully resolve human/wildlife conflicts are supported entirely by your generosity! Please donate!

This is the world we live in.

This year we admitted orphaned baby mammals as late as mid October – 6 weeks later than ever before, and other timings are also off. Raccoons admitted in October as well, and no juvenile Common Murres admitted at all, a sign not of their success in the wild, but their failure.The only thing that seems certain is the that the demands on public money will mount in the face of damage caused by a changing climate; – that barring some miraculous change in the priorities of those who wield the power today, the resources that the federal government makes available or mandates for the care of anthropogenic injuries suffered by our wild neighbors will shrink not grow.

In 2017, across the state of California, wildlife care providers were forced to evacuate their facilities because of fire. The unsustainable impact of industrial civilization on the natural world – predicted and observed decades in advance of our current predicament – is wreaking havoc now. From the Virgin Islands, we were contacted by a wildlife rehabilitator who needed to replace her copy of our book, An Introduction to Aquatic Bird Rehabilitation, that she lost with the rest of her library during the devastating Hurricane Maria.

So here we are.

Precariously perched on the edge of a less certain future – how will our changing environment harm local wildlife? How will unprecedented demands on emergency resources impact what is available for injured and orphaned wild neighbors? In times of calamity, will our human communities have the capacity to still provide care for innocent wild victims?

Against these calamities and with these uncertainties, we push forward into the new year. Our wildlife rehabilitation  program at Humboldt Wildlife Care Center is pretty straightforward regardless of challenges. Our hospital will be open to every wild neighbor in need. We will provide care for the wild animals that are brought to us, each according to their need to best of our abilities. Proper diets, appropriate medicine, and housing that encourages recovery for the diverse species we treat – no matter what the future brings, providing these essential things to our patients who were injured by human activity is both the least and the most we can do. Individual care for injured and orphaned wild species is our alpha and omega. In 2018 we will continue to improve our wildlife rehabilitation program, including much needed housing for orphaned deer fawns and expanded capacity for orphaned geese and ducks.

Once committed to providing care and rehabilitation for injured and orphaned wild animals, everything, from the practical realities to the eternal truths, demands that we work to prevent needless injury. Promoting co-existence with the wild is part and parcel of providing care to wild animals. In the best of times this is a challenge. We live in a society that hasn’t been willing to co-exist with the wild, more so seeing some elements of the wild as a threat to the other elements of wild whose extraction is profitable. And so wolves and bison were slaughtered in front of expanding cattle ranching and industrial farming. Coyotes, raccoons, prairie dogs, gophers, woodpeckers, migratory waterfowl, blackbirds and more are subject to death each year in the millions because they stepped into the wrong side of the city. Advocates for the wild in the best of times must wage constant defense against the short-sighted use of lethal options when wild animals and humans come into conflict. At its essence promoting co-existence is the work of expanding our culture’s view of who matters, who we regard as family, and who we are willing to see at all.

Now in times of struggle, we wonder if our communities will contract or expand. In twenty years will our family be larger or smaller? Promoting co-existence means working to ensure that our family grows.

Working for wildlife means working for a world of justice and equality. It’s impossible to see the orphaned raccoon and not the refugee child. In this way we stand with those who fight for civil rights, for equal treatment under the law, for the freedom to be – but clearly our own work is alongside those who struggle to bring our communities into a more sane and  humble relationship with with the source of all life, the wild, – to help bring a societal shift away from destructive extraction, away from savage land practices that destroy habitat… and we do this by reaching out and strengthening our professional networks, offering trainings and skill sharing so that the hard-won advances in our field of wildlife care are spread and survive even as other systems fail, – to get our progress, earned over decades by committed care providers everywhere, into as many baskets as we can. Support, in uncertain times, for those who provide care is as critical to our mission as the rest. So in 2018 we will continue to publish materials and provide continuing education opportunities for other wildlife rehabilitators as well as train future care providers through our internship program at HWCC.
In 2017, with your support, we provided direct care for nearly 1200 injured and orphaned wild animals. We responded to thousands of phone calls that prevented untold injuries. Our educational programs reached thousands of people from school children to professional rehabilitators, agency personnel and the next generation of care givers. All of these things we do in good times and bad, through crises and repose. Each day our doors are open and we’re working. Our shoestring budget makes some things more difficult, but it actually keeps us true to our cause – our purpose and the future.

We are preparing daily to do our work in the world that comes our way, whether it’s a world we’d choose or not. Some things are foregone: oceans will rise, forests will burn. Wars will be waged by those same hungry ghosts who wage them now. And perhaps our resources will be stretched thin – or maybe we’ll experience abundance. No matter which, we will be here. To remember the words of one of HWCC’s past board members, “when we save a wild life, we save our own humanity.”  It’s a benefit that our bleak times cannot afford to overlook. 

We’re here for the wild, including the part that’s human.

Thank you for supporting Bird Ally X and Humboldt Wildlife Care Center in 2017. We’ll see you in 2018 too! Here’s to a year that sees a swing toward sanity, and Dr. King’s universal arc bending toward justice.

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Western Pond Turtle Avoids Life in Captivity Thanks to Alert Craigslist Seller! (photos!!)

Posted on by Monte Merrick

Although nearly every patient who we admit at Humboldt Wildlife Care Center is a victim of industrial society, not all victims are injured. Recently we took a call from a man in Scotia, south of Humboldt Bay, telling us that while he’d had an aquarium listed on Craigslist someone had contacted him asking if it was suitable for a turtle. He’d asked what species and the person had told him he didn’t know but that he’d found the turtle in the Eel river.

The caller said that he’d convinced the man to surrender the turtle and that he would bring the kidnap victim to us the next day.

Among all wild species of vertebrates, reptiles and amphibians are some of the least protected by law. In California as long as you carry a sport-fishing license you may legally possess anywhere from one to an unlimited amount of turtles, frogs, salamanders, etc on any given day. Western Pond Turtles (Emys marmorata), however are listed in by the California Department of Fish and Wildlife as Species of Special Concern, due to their restricted range and relatively small population. (see more info about CDFW’s special species list here.)

True to his word, the caller came by the next day with a Western Pond Turtle. After an exam, we determined that the turtle was in good health with no injuries, so the next day we too him back to secluded spot along the Eel river near Scotia.

Our examination found no problems at all. A healthy male Western pond turtle!

We selected a release site along the Eel River near Scotia, where the turtle was first kidnapped.







And then he sunk from view back into the surrounding and surrounded Wild.

While laws might not protect reptiles and amphibians as much as we’d like, laws are not the only thing that keep us and those we cherish safe. Awareness, respect, common sense, and an imagination that allows us to see the central fact of any living being’s right to be, their right to co-exist with us without harassment and unharmed. This is a major part of our work. Your support allows us to do all that we can to promote co-existence with our wild neighbors, and to remind the adults of our society of the love for the Wild into which they were born and for whom they’d once had an affinity as natural as love for our mother.

Thank you for making sure we’re here, doors open, ready to provide whatever assistance is needed to our wild neighbors. If you’d like to support our work, please donate today!


all photos: Laura Corsiglia/BAX

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