This podcast is the recording of a conversation over the internet (please forgive the occasional audio glitch!) with Veronica Bowers the founder and executive director of Native Songbird Care and Conservation in Sebastapol, California. Veronica is a leader in rehabilitative songbird care, a powerful advocate for songbird conservation and protection and a standard setter for excellence in wildlife rehabilitation. It was a great pleasure to sit down and talk with her about achieving excellence, maintaining high standards over time, mentoring those who are new to the field of wildlife rehabilitation and keeping oneself healthy and sane despite the stress, sorrow and trauma that are an inescapable part of this work. Pour yourself a mug of chamomile and settle in for a long chat with Veronica Bowers!
After nearly a year of watching the latest outbreak of a virus in wild birds and commercial flocks travel across the US, reaching California at the Summer’s end, Highly Pathogenic Avian Influenza (HPAI) has recently been detected in Humboldt County.
Two Cackling Geese (Branta hutchinsii) and Greater White-fronted Goose (Anser albifrons) that Humboldt Wildlife Care Center submitted for testing, as well as a Turkey Vulture (Cathartes aura) carcass found in Orick and submitted for testing by the National Park Service, have been returned with prelimnary positives, and have been sent to a national laboratory for further confirmation. Since then, three Ravens (Corvus corax) have also tested positive for this deadly strain (H5N2).
A Cackling Goose treated by HWCC in 2021 at release.
Avian influenza is a common disease. Waterfowl act as a reservoir species for the virus, often showing no signs of illness. But during outbreaks, especially virulent strains can lead to mortality events among wild birds, and staggering losses in commercial poultry flocks. What distinguishes HPAI from other avian influenzas is that HPAI kills 90-100% of chickens in a lab setting.
Ravens appear to be among the most hard hit by HPAI in Humboldt County. Gregarious birds with large populations, like city folk, are perhaps most at risk.
The most susceptible wild species, besides geese and ducks, appear to be Raptors (hawks, owls, falcons), Corvids (ravens, crows, jays, etc) and Gulls. Songbirds are not considered to be high risk species as they have a very low infection rate and shed very low quantities of the virus. At this time there is no need or recommendation to take down songbird feeders unless you also have a backyard flock of ducks or chickens. (see more about avian influenza and songbirds)
For more information on HPAI in commercial flocks and wildlife
During the course of this outbreak, HWCC/bax is still admitting all wild birds in need for care, but with strict guidelines to protect our patients and also monitor the virus as it spreads through local populations. Our staff is prepared and ready to aid birds, as well as help local resource agencies monitor and slow the advance of HPAI. If you see or find a sick bird, please CALL 707 822 8839. If you have questions or concerns about this virus, feel free to call us – our staff will be happy to answer any questions that we can or point you to more resources that will help you protect any birds you have.
Thank you for your support during this time, and thank you for caring about wild birds, and all of our wild neighbors. Your support now, and always, is what keeps our doors open. You make our work possible. Thank you.
The awesome Seeds for Change round-up program of the North Coast Co-op raises tens of thousands of dollars for area non-profit organizations each year simply by encouraging shoppers to round-up their purchase price! Benefitting from this program made a huge difference during our busy Summer months caring for hundreds of orphaned wild babies. If you are a member of the Co-op, you can help us continue to have this crucial support at a critical time by voting for us now! Voting closes November 10th!
Regardless of the outcome, this program is a wonderful way to help many non-profits with a much needed boost, and all it costs is a little bit of change when you shop! Thanks to the Co-op for offering this program, and thanks to the membership for helping us be a part of the awesomeness.
And thank you, as always, for your love for the Wild!
Reverend Gary Davis is right, we do have to move. It’s been 18 months since HWCC decided that we had to move our facility. Our current lease ends at the end of this year. It took us until this Summer to locate a property that we can afford and make work. By afford, I mean, that its sale price to us is a very good deal and significantly less than any other property we’ve considered. I do not mean that we have the money. We don’t.
But this property is a rare opportunity and I do believe that we will be able to secure some kind of financing – both the property and Humboldt Wildlife Care Center are good bets.
But the costs of moving is going to come from people we ask to help. There is no other way. The amount we need to raise by the end of this year in order to complete this transition – in essence a transformation – is more than any goal we’ve ever set, by far. I don’t see another path forward.
We simply need to raise this money – it’s hard for me announce this goal, so apprehensive I am, but what else is there to be done? A downpayment, the cost of getting enough infrastructure up and running at our new facility – including all the administrative tasks – so that our work continues without interruption, while we dismantle and clear the facility we currently occupy – money and volunteer labor will be the only thngs that get us through.
So here we go! If you are reading this, you may be a person we need. We may need your physical help, we made need your financial backing, we may need your expertise. We definitely need you to root hard for us.
In every wildlife project I’ve worked on before Bird Ally X merged with HWCC, there were people who worked all day on the logistics, the paperwork, the fundraising and the budgeting. I was a wildlife rehabilitator – I specialized in oil spill response, seabird wrecks, orphan-rearing, care, innovating patient housing, and training volunteers – other highly skilled people did the work to make sure I had the tools and resources needed to do all of those things. Their contribution to those efforts is so terrific – I’ve known that forever, but when I came to HWCC, it wasn’t long before I needed to learn to do that job too.
So, yes, in fact it is frightening to embark on a project this big, this critical, this necessary and with such high stakes that failure is, as they say, not an option. Especially when it’s just some punk from New Jersey who wound up on the west coast leading the way. So I thought some background was in order.
I want to tell you the origins of Bird Ally X, how our mission led us to HWCC, and tell you what I see on the other side of this transformation – I want to tell you what we are building together and show you some of the foundation of that vision.
However, if you already know you support our work and don’t need to read about BAX history from my perspective, maybe you would like to me cut to the chase, tell you that our goal is $150,000 (which is roughly the amount of one year in our budget!) and donate now.
For the rest of you who would like to know more about BAX’ beginnings and how we got here, and where we’re headed, well read on….
Bird Ally X – who we are and how we got this way
Since this website’s first incarnation at blogspot.com in 2009, the voice speaking to you from this platform has mostly been mine. Making the website was a gamble. Only Laura Corsiglia, my beloved and co-inventer of the idea of Bird Ally X knew about it – BAX was an idea whose time was about to come but hadn’t quite.
But it did come. On September 22, 2009, Bird Ally X was founded as a collective by six of us. Shannon RIggs, DVM (currently the Director of Anaimal Care at Pacific Wildlife Care in Morro Bay), Vann Masvidal (currently the Center Director also at PWC in Morro Bay) January Bill and Marie Travers (both currently leading our Botulism Response Program in the Lower Klamath Wildlife Refuge), and Laura (currently BAX art director as well as a logistical support for HWCC, and chief photographer and also my beloved) and me. Our first task: to develop a workshop that we could take to conferences that gave people a place to start learning how to effectively rehabilitate aquatic birds.
Athough we each had a lot of experience rehabilitating wildlife in general, oil spill response had given us each a strong specailization in aquatic bird rehabilitation, with deeper specialization among us – for example, Shannon is a gifted surgeon, Laura has a genius eye, Vann is extremely sensitive, Marie has perserverance and mad skills, January is methodical and precise and deeply committed to excellence. I don’t mean these people have common traits that you might identify among your friends, not unless your friends happen to be super heroes, which is what my five co-founders all have in common. Let’s face it, I met them in the middle of an oil spill response where we were all far from home, working 16 hour days amid hundreds of suffering wild birds, doing what we could to keep them alive and help them recover. I was amazed by them. Truly super heroes. And when we founded Bird Ally X, we thought it would be great to help other super heroes learn how to effectively rehabilitate aquatic bIrds too.
Making this workshop led to an expanded mission: to publish instructional materials for wildlife rehabilitators everywhere. Many rehabilitators work at a very small scale, usually in their own homes or in their own backyards. who are remote yet still deserve to learn the most current techniques of our field, also to help small facilities at times when they face an influx of patients that overwhelm them or are unfamiliar – most rehabilitators don’t get frequent chances to learn how to handle a sudden seabird mortality event, and need help if it happens in their area, as an example.
In the end, our mission statement included providing direct care to wild animals in need, providing educational materials and opportunities to wildlife rehabilitators and the general public, and also, and no less important, to advocate for our patients, not as stewards but as allies in the ongoing and undeniable war on nature and the wild, of which we are also a product, recognizing where our side truly is, just as Allied forces fought their war against fascist destruction.
All of this was, you could say, a tall order.
After the workshop was complete and had been delviered a few times, we wrote a book, An Introduction to Aquatic Bird Rehabilitation. You can buy it here. We’ve sold several hundred, maybe a thousand. We keep the price low. The last few printings have been done beautifully at the local and fantastic Bug Press.
The book came out of that first workshop that we put together, called by the same name. Our first version of the book was a ‘zine styled handout, about 50 pages long, and offered with our workshop. The second iteration was still a free handout, but had grown to over a hundred pages. At last in 2012, we published the book in its current form, 150 pages and available for $38USD. Now, ten years later, we are planning its first revisions.
Intro to Aquatic Bird Rehabilitatio, the first handoutThe inside page, with publishing information…Our hundred page expanded handout.The handout gows up, our 150 page textbook, fiorst published in Spring of 2012.The back page of our book with comments from colleagues.A pictoral history of our still in demand textbook.
In 2011, a year after receiving our 501(c)3, most of the six co-founders had been scattered by life’s circumstances (work, family, the usual) to different parts of the state and country. For example, Laura and I spent the last 6 months of 2010 in MIchigan responding to the massive spill of Alberta tar sands oil into the Kalamazoo River from a ruptured Enbridge pipeline, where we provided care for hundreds of birds and thousands of aquatic turtles. (At points during that response, I was responsible for the entire wildlife response! eek! talk about sleepless nights!)
Come August of 2011, with three of us (Laura, myself and January) in Humboldt County for various reasons not related to BAX, a small disaster that had been unfolding for months, if not years, came to our attention. Juvenile Brown Pelicans were being seen at fish cleaning stations at public boat launches and docks, completely soaked and suffering because of it.
Fish waste, greasy and non-soluble, poses a significant problem for aquatic birds the world over. THe impact of fish waste on feathers is the same as the imapct of petroleum products – that is, it completely disrupts the waterproofing that a bird’s feathers provide by disrupting the arrangement of feathers and allowing water to penetrate to the body. Like most birds, an aquatic bird’s temperature runs from about 39˚to 41˚C (102-106˚F) and being waterproof is what allows them to thrive on water that may only be 10˚C (50˚F). If the water gets through to their skin it’s not unlike a diver who suddenly finds they have a hole in thier drysuit. If they don’t leave the water they will soon succumb to hypothermia. For our unfortunate human diver, simply pulling them back to the boat and giving them hot tea may suffice, but for an aquatic bird, leaving water means leaving home – where the food is , where the water is, where life is… stranded they will soon die.
After a couple days of reconnaisance, we found wet, struggling fish waste contaminated juvenile Brown Pelicans from Crescent CIty to Shelter Cove, a span of nearly 200 miles. We captured close to ten immediately, and over the next month in 2011 rescued and treated more than 50 individuals.
In 2012, the situation was not necessarily worse, but we learned about it sooner, in early July and began our response then. We ended up treated over 250 birds that year, mostly Pelicans, but also about a dozen gulls of different species, but mostly Heermann’s Gulls, who are closely associated with Brown Pelicans.
The 2011 response began our relationship with HWCC, at the time a very small clinic treating far less than a thousand patients each year, with one staff person and no business hours, only a hotline. We worked with HWCC to develop thier facility into a true hospital and rasied funds so that our project of caring for the impacted Pelicans did not disrupt their meager finances (our finances are STILL meager!)
Juvenile Brown Pelicans make use of our Pelican, Gull and Cormorant aviary, during the fish waste response of 2012.Nora Chatmon began as a volunteer, completed an internship, joined our staff, and is a member of our Board of DirectorsA Hairy Woodpeckers her freedom after being released.Our orphaned Raccoon program has given close to 200 Raccoons a second chance!One of the 275 Western Grebes we’ve treated in the last ten years enjoys a night smelt.Hit by a car, a Western Screech Owl prepares for life, take two.Desiree Vang, volunteer, then intern, now on staff at HWCC.Julia Bautista, a current intern, working with Barn Owl fledglings we treated the Summer of 2022A few photographs from the last ten years of HWCC’s daily activities.
Developing HWCC’s infrastructure did create another challenge. There was no one on the staff who could operate what we’d built. Pools are a complex tool to us in treating wildlife, and the inexperiences care giver is at a marked disadvantage. without a good working knowledge of a pool’s usse and maintenance, they become a danger to the patient, not a benefit. HWCC asked BAX staff to stay on as managers of their facility in the winter of 2011/12 and we did.
As I mentioned above, 2012 saw a much larger fish waste crisis with 5 times the patients of 2011. A response of this magnitude required help from out of our region. Staff from the Oiled Wildlife Care Network (OWCN), staff from the Calfornia Department of Fish and WIldlife (CDFW) and rehabilitators from around the state came to Humboldt to lend a hand.
Besides for developing our facility to handle this level of response, we had to develop our core group of volunteers. During this time we realized that we had an incredible opportunity to build not only a facility that could provide high quality care, but, given our proximity to Cal Poly Humboldt, one of the premier wildlife studies universities in the West, a hospital that could also train current and future wildlife care providers.
A teaching hospital is something you can start right away while you spend a lifetime making it better, and we did start right away. Over the last ten years our internship program has helped nearly 75 young people, mostly students at Cal Poly, advance their skills and ready them for employment in the field of wildlife care. The five current members of our staff are graduates of the program! As we move into the future, a major goal is to further exapnd the eduactional opportunites ofr our volunteers, interns and staff, and help contribute to a cultiure of excellence in our field. A sturdy and sustainable foundation will always be a crucial ingredient for success, and this is where support from the community plays a huge role, making our goals achievable.
The goal of converting Humboldt Wildlife Care Center into a teaching hospital led us to merging with HWCC in 2013, -a move that was completed in 2014. In 2014 HWCC merged with BAX. Taking complete responsibility for this facility has allowed us to use it, not only asa hospital that treats 1500 patients each year, providing second chances to innocent wild animals caught in the myriad snares of human infrastructure, but also a laboratory to develop techniques and strategies that can be used by wildlife rehabilitators anywhere who suffer from the very typical scenario of being terribly overworked while being shockingly underfunded. (Take our budget as an example, last year we took in about $150,000 and treated 1,612 patients. That amounts to $93 per patient. Now that’s not the whole story, many of those patients were very long term, like an orphaned raccoon who requires 4 months of care, compared to Fox Sparrow who hit a window and is ready for release in 24 hours – obviously patient needs can differ extremely – but still, we maintain a staff and facility on very little money – our excellence is found in resilience, innovation, sacrifice and a willingness to use what’s available to achieve the impossible!)
Still, the simple truth is that we have been able to develop much needed training materials and workshops becuaes we’ve had the opportunity to use real world development (something we might call trail and error) – this opportunity is golden, and we want to continue in this vein for as long as wildlife rehabilitation is a needed service.
A very nervous Coyote pup gets an examination.Egrets, we’ve had a few.A Bald Eagle treated for lead posioning returns to Bear River Valley Anna’s Hummingbird in care. A Pacific Pond Turtle makes their way in thier own time back to the wild!Sometimes a young owl just needs to find their way back to the nest. We can help.A Black-tailed Deer fawn at release puts some distance between us!Some of the 13,544 patients who’ve passed through our care in the last ten years.
The Pelican fish waste response also led us into a much more active role as advocates for our patients, including protecting our wild neighbors from becoming patients. In fact I was the inaugural chair of the Advocacy committee for the California Council for Wildlife Rehabilitators, a professional organization of rehabilitators in our state that hosts an annual Symposium and supports the improvement of available care.
It became quite obvious that those of us on the frontlines of the war between society and nature had an important perspective and important specific knowledge that could help policy makers make decisions and take actions that were inaccordance with the critical needs of wild animals. Some policies are easy to enact, like putting on lid on the fishwaste bins so that juvenile Pelicans can’t forage in them, while other solutions require changing hearts and minds, like banning cruel traps, stopping abominations like bear hounding and killing contests and promoting use of nonlethal measures instead of senseless slaughter to protect property from damages caused by wild animals.
Advocacy work can be problematic. Political divisions are readily apparent when you attend a public meeting. Advocating for wild animals automatically puts on one side of the aisle and on the other side are the agricultural and “hook and bullet” lobbyists, as they are often called. Well, ranchers and farmers, hunters and anglers, are real people, not lobbyists, and they help to make up our community. Ranchers, farmers hunters and anglers may encounter a wild animal in need and require our help – ranching, farming, hunting and fishing don’t automatically preclude compassion. So we must be careful not to alienate those who may need our help. It’s a line that we walk everyday if we are being true to our mission in all of its implications and ramifications. And in fact, learning to walk this line is fitting and proper – we are here to serve all of our community when they need us. Being able to persuade an angler to help us stop fish waste pollution is critical! We need more allies, not more enemies. Learning to walk this line is the right thing to do. And we have no other choice; our responsibility to our patients and the wildlife we serve demand it.
To that end, we intitiated our “humane solutions” program, in which we help people solve any conflict they might have with a wild animal in a manner that is respectful of the rights and needs of the animal, and effectively protects the property and safety of the people involved. With this program we have intervened in thousands of conflicts over the last eleven years, keeping wild families together, and preserving hundreds, if not thousands, of wild lives.
The big stories, of course, from the last 11 years, are our patients. As I write this, Wednesday, September 28th at 5pm our database says that we’ve admitted 13,544 wild animals since January 2012. That’s 13,544 wild animals in need. Suffering animals who would’ve had nowhere to turn, no-one to relieve their suffering if it weren’t for you and your support of our work.
And while I’m not the leader of our botulism project in the Lower Klamath, two of our six co-founders are. You can read all about their work caring for botulism-infected shorebirds and waterfowl during the last four years.
The immediate future and what comes next.
Our intention for the future is to continue what we’ve been doing, and to always seek improvement. Right now, this is easier said than done, but in fact it always is.
I dream of an internship program that can house and pay our interns, even if it’s only a small stipend. There is nothing that being able to afford working without compensation qualifies a person for, and many potentially gifted caregivers cuold be denied opportunity because they don’t have the resources to sustain working without pay. I’d like to change that and widen the reach we have by deepening the pool we draw from.
Right now, in California Black Bear cub and Mountain Lion kitten rehabilitation is done only by a few organizations, (if at all in the case of Mountain Lion kittens). Every Black Bear cub admitted from Humboldt, Trinity, Del Norte, Sikiyou, Shasta, or Mendocino Counties is sent to Sacramento and then to Lake Tahoe for rehabilitation, but often into permanent captivity. I would like to change this, and establish a legitmate bear cub rehabilitation program here so that the region’s bears can be treated and released at home. This is a long term goal, but one we never lose sight of …
A fully functional medical clinic, with the capacity to make radiographs and a veterinarian on staff are developments that we must pursue. Volunteer veterinarians, and long distance consulting with wildlife specific veterinarians gets the job done, but better is needed, even if for the benefit of our staff. I’ve had the privilege of working with some very gifted wildlife vets at the various places I’ve been on staff over the last 23 years and I want to ensure that the staff of HWCC has the same benefit.
Expanded service and an increase in our preventative programs are in the works, from education programs at all levels (schoolchildren, governing boards) to practical efforts like beach patrols, increased capacity for interventions in conflicts, and late night availability for emergency response. We know these are things we can build, given the time and materials.
In short, we must always expand our capacity and raise our standards. A capacity reduced, a standard lowered are poisonous. Our mission, our patients, our vocation all demand excellence. We strive to meet that demand.
I do wish we had more time to make this critical move. But that’s never been possible, and ensuing circumstances didn’t help, such as my health problems that took up a significant part of last year. All that we’ve built does feel jeopardized right now – and what we’ve built has signifcant value – losing it would be catastrophic – so we must preserve it, and we must do so in a way that allows us to continue to build on what we’ve accomplished.
That’s what makes this property in Manila a “rare opportunity.” Let me count the ways.
It exists. We’ve been looking for suitable property that we can envision purchasing, meaning, that we can even entertain the idea of raising the funds. Many incredible properties are available for those with the resources to buy them. This property in Manila is offered to us because we know the owner, who understands how we will use it, and has generously lowered the price.
Maybe we can afford it.
Location: like our current location in Bayside, Manila is well situated in Humboldt County to make it it accessible for the many communities North and South. Staying between Eureka and Arcata seems important. We routinely make trips to Crescent City and Garberville. Arcata Bay is a good spot for us.
Size: although I had dreamed of something larger, in truth we’ll be increasing the space we have available by at least four times. This will improve what we can set up for our patients. Yes, it may be the only option we have, but it’s also a good option to have.
The wild animals of Northern California and beyond need us to thrive, and to do so we must survive. If we fail to acquire this property we will have nowhere to go when our lease ends at the end of this year. Even acquiring that property tomorrow means we have only three months to get it ready for us to use it (certainly not to bring it to it’s full capacity, that may take a couple years) at the same time that we must dismantle our current facility and clear it from the land.
We need your help. Wildlife of our enormous and beautiful and necessary region in need, need you. Please help. Donate to our move and future.
It was the middle of July when Humboldt Wildlife Care Center admitted a very young Ringtail (Bassariscus astutus) who’d fallen through a chimney into someone’s house in Hoopa. You may have read about her needs in care when her story was picked up by local news source, Redheaded Blackbelt.
Ringtail on her 3rd day in care..
While she would never be a very large animal, weighing about 1 kilogram (2.2lbs) as an adult, she was definitely going be much larger than this!
A Ringtail (other common names include Ring-tailed cat, MIner’s cat and even Civet cat) is not a cat, although they do have many cat-like qualities, from appearance to behaviors. In fact, Ringtails are members of the family Procyonidae, a group that includes coatimundis, kinkajous and the much more familiar Raccoon. Yet the comparisons to other animals are even built into their scientific name – the latin binomial Bassariscus astutus, literally means, sly little fox!
When this sly little raccoon cousin was admitted, her eyes were open and her teeth were just starting to come in. She was still quite young – maybe 8 weeks old. We immediately started her on a milk replacer. At only 140 grams, she would need at least two weeks, maybe three, before she could be weaned to an all solid food diet.
Samantha, a summer intern, prepares the RIngtail’s milk replacer.
In her initial housing.
Already grown a lot since admission, this is one of the last times she was ever tube-fed milk replacer.
By the end of July, the youngster was on a diet of egg, fruit, vegetables, insects, rodents and birds. In the middle of a hectic baby season most of our mammal housing was already in use by the usual suspects (raccoons, skunks, opossums), besides her needs for outdoor housing were far more arboreal than any of the mammals we routinely treat. So we built a small but usable housing, dubbed Ringtail Tower. WIth a lot of vertical space, she was able to develop her climbing skills while chasing crickets as she learned to hunt.
RIngtail Tower, now suffering from empty-nest syndrome.
After several more weeks, and a lot of crickets, rats, mice, eggs, blueberries and more, she was getting to be a good size, with good skills, for us to start planning her release.
Although she was born in Hoopa, she’d spent a large portion of her infancy and her first several weeks of being a juvenile in care in our facility on the edge of Humboldt Bay. The record-shattering heat that gripped most of California, including her home valley on the Trinity River, never touched us here in Humboldt. Although she was ready to be released, we decided to wait for the heatwave to break before taking her home.
At last, the second weekend of September, the temperature in Hoopa was down to reasonable 90 degrees with even cooler temperatures forecast for the coming week. We took the opportunity to release her during this window. With several days of normal heat, she’d be better acclimated if the thermometer started climbing into the danger zone again.
Here the Ringtail is in her outdoor housing in the middle of capture for her release evaluation.
The box was placed carefully to give her an easy launch into cover.
Thank goodness for long lenses and fantastically alert Procyonids! She definitely wants to keep us in sight as she makes her break.
A last backward glance before she slides into the prviacy of her wild freedom.
Caring for this young Redtail was an honor. To be able to provide care for all our patients is an honor. It’s a privilege to be this near to wildness everyday of our lives and we don’t take this privilege lightly. That our work is so rewarding is something for which I believe we are each grateful everyday. But our work is not only a privilege, it’s also necessary. This Ringtail needed us. All of our patients do. This necessity, and the sorrow of this necessity, is also with us daily. And this necessity is what makes our position so precarious. The only thing that can stabilize our future, and ensure that we are here, every day of every year to help wildlife in need, is your support. Please donate. Our patients need us, and we need you. Thank you. click to donate
White Heron by John Ciardi What lifts the heron leaning on the air I praise without a name. A crouch, a flare, a long stroke through the cumulus of trees, a shaped thought at the sky — then gone. O rare! Saint Francis, being happiest on his knees, would have cried Father! Cry anything you please
But praise. By any name or none. But praise the white original burst that lights the heron on his two soft kissing kites. When saints praise heaven lit by doves and rays, I sit by pond scums till the air recites It’s heron back. And doubt all else. But praise.
The person who called was standing at the Eureka waterfront, near the Adorni Center, when she watched a Great Egret come swimming across the channel that separates the shoreline there from Woodley Island. The ordinarily elegant and beautiful white bird clambored out of the water up onto the riprap and hunkered down, apparently exhausted.
Catching the Egret wasn’t that hard. A bedraggled big white bird sitting on rocks is easy to spot, and their exhaustion left them unable to flee when approached. Once captured, it was obvious that this was a juvenile Egret, – this year’s model, who’d probably come into this world just two islands over on Tuluwat, which hosts a large heronry each Spring and Summer.
After getting them back to the clinic, we first provided a warm environment to help with hypothermia, and administered warmed fluids both to help warm the egret as well as to begin rehydrating the seriously depleted bird.
Within a few hours the bird was standing and very pleased to discover the fish that we’d put in their housing with them. For piscivores in trouble, fish is a big part of the solution.
For many patients, a small sample of blood can reveal a lot about their condition. Spinning the sample in a centrifuge separates the blood into cells and plasma, revealing the percentage that is red blood cells. This number is often called the “packed cell volume” or PCV. Red blood cells carry the oxygen that is part of the fuel of life – the lower the PCV, the more anemic the patient. While there is some variation across the many species we treat, for aquatic birds, a PCV of 40 (that is to say that red blood cells make up 40% of the total sample) is considered a baseline of good health. This Egret’s first sample on admission revealed a critically low PCV of 17%. Considering the severity of the bird’s dehydration, it’s safe to say that the actual percentage of red blood cells would be even lower one the patient is rehydrated.
Still, this number didn’t really change the care we offered (warmth, fluids, fish and safety), but it did let us know how close to death the young Egret had come.
After a few days, of hydration and food, the Egret’s PCV had climbed above 20 and they were able to make short evasive flights in the aviary when we would capture for regular exams and weight checks. After 8 days in care the PCV had recovered another 10 points and stood at 30%. After a couple weeks, the Egret was flying beautifully – their PCV was back within normal limits, their weight had increased from 679 grams in admission to 1117 grams – a 160% gain! They looked really good. It was time for release.
Clearly this Egret is thinking, “Outside the box!”
“Two soft kissing kites”, indeed!
Watching an Egret fly from our care out over the mudflats of lowtide on Humboldt Bay is one of the greatest thrills.
A moment to pause and consider this restored freedom!
With a vigorous shake, the Egret dumps the last of humanity that’d been clinging to their feathers. A shiver and we are a memory.
The telephoto lens reveals where the Egret flew.
An adult Great Egret flies in to see what’s going on.
And so we leave them to their private, wild freedom.
Even though many of our patients are injured traumatically, or have become so sick and debilitated that there isn’t anythng we can do to help, and even through the frustrations of living in a human society that casually hinders, harms and destroys wild lives, providing care for the wild, the innocent, provides a wonderful close view of the miracle of healing, the mystery of hunger, and the fulfillment of dreams. This Egret was an astonishing patient. Your support bought the fish, the fluids, the safe space, the net and the gasoline for the rescue, as well as paid for the trained and dedicated staff needed to deliver it all in an effective manner. Thank you for making sure this Great Egret had somewhere and someone who could help them with a second chance.
This is a crucial time in our history, and as we prepare to move our facility to a location that will give us something more stable and sustainable we need your help badly! If you can, please DONATE today
Thank you for making the difference all of our patients need.
Six nestling Barn Owls (Tyto Alba) were admitted to Humboldt Wildlife Care Center mid-July, nestlings who’d been unintentional stowaways on a truckload of hay from Siskiyou county and delivered to Myrtletown.
We’d been planning a trip deep into Siskiyou to return these owls to where they were from. In preparation the owls had each shown they could identify, capture and eat prey (a necessary step when rehabilitating orphaned hunters). They were each expert at flight, in excellent condition, and more than anything else, the aviary was clearly the biggest problem they had. It was time for freedom.
As anyone within five hours of Humboldt Bay probably knows, Siskiyou, Eastern Humboldt, and Trinity counties have been suffering from wild fires since early Summer. Unfortunately for these owls, the place on Earth where they came into the word is under a fire threat.
So we found a location that incorporated some of the characteristics of home, and hoped for the best, in a world that is becoming a patchwork, with all of us leaping from slippery rock to rock, trying to keep it going as we cross this torrent.
A Coyote pup found near Tule Lake in the middle if a routine exam during her care at HWCC
What a Summer, what a year, what an era!!!! As of today, the 21st of August, Humboldt Wildlife Care Center has treated a thousand wild patients in 2022. Our humane solutions work has kept scores of wild families together. Among the thousand patients, our small facility in Bayside ( right now we only have a quarter-acre!) has provided care for 7 Barn Owl babies, 2 Coyote pups (one from Tule Lake, the other from Round Valley) dozens of Barn Swallows, Cliff Swallows, Violet-green Swallows, House finches, White-crowned Sparrows, and Band-tailed Pigeons. Many Mallards, Raccoon babies and a Ring-tailed cat we’ve had in care sicne she was an infant are still in care today, but soon to be released.
Now, as our caseload lightens up a little (we’re down to 50 patients from 100 two weeks ago currently in treatment) and we’re finally able to breathe a little, we have to focus on the biggest challenge we’ve ever faced – moving our hospital to a new location without interrupting the care we must provide our wild neighbors… I’m certain we’ll make it, but to be completely honest the stress of making sure we do is constant, and tiring. Already understaffed and overworked, it will require a huge amount of community support for us to make this happen. We need you badly right now.
I’ll be asking for contributions nonstop until we’ve made this transition – I hope you understand why!
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A clutch of five House Finches, who we cared for from the time they were featherless hatchlings, in our aviary being fed. Soon they were completely self-feeding and wanted nothing to do with us. All five were successfully raised and released in July!Feeding these young House Finches is a sweet privilege in a day of long exhausting hours.A very young Ring-tailed Cat, a cousin of the Raccoon, was brought to us in early July. She is doing very well and will be released soon back to freedom in her home range.We’ve admitted several Gray Fox kits this year. Four have already been released and one is due to be free very soon!A young fawn in bad shape: Northern California hasa lot of deer but very few fawn rehabilitators. This young Mule Deer came from Siskiyou county for care because we were closest.Five Mule Deer fawns currently in care. Soon they will be weaned and ready for release. We have a very hands off approach when it comes to fawns – they need all of their wits to make it in the rugged Coastal Range – their wildness is the greatest asset and we work hard to respect and protect it. This photo take through a special hidden observation opening but there is no sneaking up on these guys!
A Western Gray Squirrel, admitted as an infant at the end of April was in care for a month before he was old enough to be released. Staff rehabilitator and BAX board member Nora Chatmon feeds him a milk replacer in the weeks before he was weaned.
One of our awesome Summer interns, Julia Bautista, administers a special vitamin/mineral supplement to a young Barn Swallow.
This Rubber Boa, a locally common if rarely seen snake, was caught by a cat in Southern Humboldt. After a week of antibiotics, the snake was ready for relase. Outdoor, free roaming cats cause a lot of pain and suffering to our wild neighbors.
As our Summer begins to wind down, and the effort to move looms in the near future, we are in a serious situation. We need your support now.
Every day someone tells us how much they appreciate that we are here. I understand that completely. I appreciate that we are here too! If we weren’t there would be nowhere for wild neighbors to be treated and released – no place to end the suffering of those too wounded to ever be free again, and no place to peacefully resolve human wildlife conflicts in a manner that all parties are satisfied and wild families are kept intact. The service that any wildlife hospital provides its community is pretty far below the radar, but when the need becomes apparent, when someone finds a wild neighbor injured or orphaned by the ordinary everyday operations of our human-built world, it is critical that a facility be there to provide the necessary care. HWCC has been operating in Humboldt County since 1979. I intend that it be here, providing ever better care for innocent wild animals far into the future, far beyond my own lifespan. Your support is the only thing that will make sure that we continue to be here for our wild neighbors now and forever and right now, we need you badly. Please help.
It’s not the first time this has happened – a trailer-load of hay from Ashland or Yreka or somewhere else hours away from Humboldt Wildlife Care Center is delivered to a local ranch, only to discover nestling Barn Owls (Tyto alba) hidden with the bales. It’s happened a few times over the decade, in fact. So it wasn’t shocking when that call came in the middle of July – a load of hay just delivered in Eureka that had come down from Siskiyou County brought along the babies of a Barn Owl nest too. We admitted six nestlings that day, dehydrated, hungry and very unhappy.
As nestlings go, these six were pretty far along in their development. Three of them fledged within the first week of care and were moved to an outdoor aviary. Within two weeks, all six owls were flying. Each day each owl was getting at least one “medium” sized rat. (that’s a lot of rats – more on how we pay for it all later).
RIght now, we are helping them prepare for release by learning to hunt. The lessons tend to come pretty easily for them. You could say that they’re naturals. As soon as they demonstrate that they can support themselves, we know the time for their return the Wild is at hand.
Fledgling Barn Owl getting a routine examination while in care at HWCC.
Clinic staff administer fluid therapy on a dehydrated Barn owl nestling.
A young owl’s wing with new feathers that have not yet flown.
They sure fly now, and soon in total freedom.
These six Barn Owls are getting a second chance at wild freedom. They came so close to being among the many untallied victims of a human world that kills randomly and without recognition simply by operating as it was inended – We grow the hay, we store it, we ship it – none of it meant to harm owls, and none of it meant to prevent harm either. It’s in this world that we meet our mission. And we can only do it with your help. We’ve already spent over a thousand dollars on food for these beautiful and innocent wild lives. That’s only example of the real difference your support makes. Your support pays for the heating pads, the fluids, the aviary, the phone and the dedicated and skilled staff it takes to make the whole thing fly. Thank you!!
REMINDER! This is our last year at our curent location. YOur help is needed making this challenging move. Read more about it here and again, your support will help us a lot. It’s getting urgent!
Since we realized that we needed to relocate Humboldt Wildlife Care Center from its current location in Bayside to somewhere suitable and sustainable back in March of 2021, with less than two years to accomplish to the move, there has been a background of stress about our future that has added a layer of urgency to each day of operation – the clock is ticking!
After months of searching and considering multiple scenarios, at last, we’ve settled on a property that is available and accessible and meets most of the criteria we’d established. While the asking price is much more than we have, it’s also the most affordable we’ve been able to find. We’ve come to an agreement with the property owner for the lot, which, happily is nearly 6 times larger than our current leased quarter-acre. With this major step achieved, now we enter the next big challenge: secure the funds!
Sneak peek of future site of HWCC, once we secure the funding!
We don’t have much time now. We need to be on our new site and operating by the first of the new year, as well as have cleared our old site from our soon-to-be-former landlord’s land. This is a very tall order. We will not be successful without the help from our community, especially financially. Still, that we’ve even found a piece of property that we can use is very relieving – it hadn’t been looking too good for too many months!
The new location is in Manila, which has many advantages for our work. I think we will be well-placed to continue and expand our reach in our region. As the Crow flies, we’re just moving across the bay.
Another view of this future diamond in the current rough!
What a year it’s been! As the director of the Care Center, I don’t think we’ve faced a more challenging time – between my health problems (which thankfully are no problem at all now!), the ongoing pandemic, the record number of patients we’ve admitted over the last two years and the challenges of of this relocation, we are in a swirl of difficulties! Yet guiding us, as always, we have our mission – to serve our region’s wild neighbors in need, to serve the field of widlife rehabilitation with workshops, to educate new rehabilitators, and to help our communities develop the resources and perspectives needed to peacefully co-exist with the Wild, and end our society’s war on Nature. Our mission makes our challenges seem quite manageable indeed! And with your support, which has kept has going for over 40 years, Humboldt Wildlife Care Center will move into a new era of stability and growth.
If we had $500,000 dollars, we could purchase the property and fund the costs of rebuilding of our facility. That’s a lot to raise in such a short period. Realistically, we need to plan on having less resources available – we’ll need to creative and committed. Fortunately, we are well versed in accomplishing a lot with very little. I don’t know how we will do it, but I do know that we will.
Thank you for being here always. You’ve made quality care for our wild neighbors possible. If you’d like to support our work, our land purchase, or the costs of rebuilding, and invest in the continued care available for our wild neighbors, please DONATE! Every gift helps.
