Your support means everything. We’ve already treated, cared for, raised and released 25 Swallows in 2025 (Barn, Violet-green, Cliff; family, Hirundinidae) and these 5 Barn Swallows still in care will most likely be the last Swallow babies of the year. Just in staff time alone, these babies are dear, but they’re dearness is most reliably measured in the joy they express in flight. At the end of Summer, we’re running on fumes. We need you. Please help.
Pink mouth? Blue eyes? Yep that’s a baby crow!So adorable…Weight checks are a crucial part of baby care!In the aviary…Release evaluation!Flies like a champ!Ready to roll!Out of the box forever!Into the woods, back to the wild, resumption of freedom!
Until this year, our statistically normal number of Crows (technically, American Crows (Corvus brachyrhynchos) that we admit annually has fluctuated between 20 and 30, with about 75% of them being juveniles, fledglings, nestlings or hatchlings – in other words only about 1 in 4 are adults. But this year has been extraordinary. So far, we’ve already admitted 53 crows, and an astonishing 87% of them have been this year’s babies!
Crows are perhaps the best animal ever to come down the pike. What a thrill it is to help them reach their adulthood! It’s a shame of course, as all orphans are a tragedy – yet the privilege of helping these incredible beings overcome the horrifying setback of losing their parents is a joy beyond compare.
As is always the case with our patients, their wildness, their freedom and their autonomy must be respected. It’s good for people to practice this kind of respect toward other living beings in their daily lives. It’s salvific.
Often, juvenile crows make a few mistakes – perfectly normal for adventurous and bright adolescents to run astray – which separate them from their family. In such cases, if they come to us, we can sometimes get them home. Re-uniting a crow baby with crow parents is the best possible outcome. Of course that’s not always possible. In which case, we have an aviary and diet that will have to do, until they can be released, able to be independent, able to be an adult crow. Learning how to do this effectively is a life-long journey.
What pays for the process, what makes the process possible, what gives these incredible and intelligent wild neighbors the second chance they need and deserve – no matter how many we admit! – is your support. Thank you for getting us this far. Thank you for taking us further.
In care for about two weeks, eyes have opened and weighs almost 500 grams!Tube feeding a milk replacer…our Nursery in the dunes of Manilaweight check day! getting big now! 4 raccoons getting released!The caution they show getting used to their new environment (the big wide world) will help them live long happy lives.As it turns out, wild freedom is pretty darn agreeable!
The first baby raccoons of our 2025 wild orphan season were admitted on May 25. For the baby raccoons who come to us so young that their eyes are still closed, they will be in care for at least four months before they are able to be released back to their wild freedom. Our first babies released this year were a little older when admitted so they spent less time in care, only 3 months! From eyes just opening, only having a milk replace, to a 3+ kilogram omnivore with a strong desire to soak their food in water, the journey with orphaned raccoons is a privilege to share – they are smart, inventive, curious, bold, cautious, and more – and given the chance (which we never give) they could probably beat us at checkers.
Because raccoons are so smart we have to take very positive steps during their time in care to protect their wildness, respect their privacy and ensure that they each have a healthy fear of people. (If you’ve ever met a person, you can probably imagine why this fear is necessary.)
Almost every baby raccoon we admit lost their mother due to trapping. People see an adult raccoon around their property, or under their house, and they trap her and take her far away, or they kill her. In either case, they leave behind babies who will die without her unless they are rescued. Please, if you ever have a problem with a raccoon, or any wild animal, call us! We can help resolve the situation in a way that everyone, you, the raccoon mother and the raccoon babies can be satisfied – and the wild family can be kept together.
Treating wild orphans is tricky business. It requires a trained staff and it takes plenty of resources. Your support provides these crucial elements. Thank you! Thank you for making sure our region has a place that wild animals in need can be helped. We wouldn’t be here, 365 days a year (366 in leap year!) without your support.
It’s rare that we admit orphaned baby bats at Humboldt Wildlife Care Center. We haven’t had any baby bats in care since 2017, but this June we admittted eight Little Brown Bats (Myotis lucifugus)!
The little furry soon to be flying mammals fell from their colony in an outbuilding on the trail to the Headwaters Preserve. First we admitted three, but soon five more came in! Feeding baby bats is skill that you can’t really learn unitl you need to do it, so it had been a while since our staff had gotten any real practice. But it turns out it is like riding a bike, except you don’t have to pedal and you don’t need a helmet!
However protective gear is still required. While very rare in bats, especially bats so young, rabies is a real concern and all staff must wear protective gloves when handling bats. This protocol protects the patient and the care provider – any bat who is able to bite a person must be sent in for rabies testing, and this can only be done on a dead bat. So we make sure not to force that outcome.
Still, rabies is very rare. We’ve treated 400 bats at HWCC in the last thirteen years – and we’ve sent dozens in for testing because they’d scratched or bitten a member of the public – only bat that we’ve sent for testing has come back positive for rabies. All the same, we take the virus very seriously and we protect ourselves from transmission.
After a few weeks in care, a few had died, but the rest began to fly! Soon it was time to release. We took them back to the Redwood surrounding the building where their colony had been so that they could rejoin their community, ready for wild freedom and shouldering their task to help rid the world of mosquitoes. Go bats go!
Your support is what makes the care we provide possible. Thank you!!!
it was a path to release that required paying attention.Out of the box, in the sun, no barriers in sightA young bird’s first real flight back …… to an extremely luxurious home.
A Humboldt Wildlife Care Center volunteer who lives in Crescent City was spending the day on Harris Beach in Brookings when they found a stranded young Pelagic Cormorant (Urile pelagicus). They scooped up the lost youngster and called us – we met them halfway to get the new patient. (We put on some miles covering the North Coast!)
Too young to be on their own, away from the colony but not quite flighted, the little Cormorant was soon eating fish and gaining weight. Pelagic Cormorants are significantly smaller than the other two Cormorants, the Double-crested (Nannopterum auritum) and the Brandt’s (Urile penicillatus), who we also see here, but even so, they can really put away le Poisson!
After nearly three weeks, our young patient was flying and diving and ready for release. We loaded him up and took him back to Oregon and the Harris Beach colony where his family and whole gang are still enjoying the Summer. We scrambled over rocks to reach an area just across from a large rock past the break where many Pelagic Cormorants were perched and flying. Once out of the box, beyond our grasp, our young patient left our care for home and wild freedom.
Your support is why this desperate young Pelagic Cormorant had a place to go. As you see, we’re the only hope for a second chance for the seabirds of our region for a vast area of the Redwood Coast. We are not as famous as the trees, so it’s your support that we need. Thank you for keeping options open for our literally and figuratively stranded wild neighbors. If you want to help, please
Summer 2025 has been very busy – so far the busiest on record! Humboldt Wildlife Care Center has treated over 1100 patients already this year. And this year has also brought in the most Gray Fox (Urocyon cinereoargenteus) kits on record. So far we’ve admitted had 8 kits from all around Humboldt County. Four were orphaned when their mother was shot. Two were sick babies who we were able to treat over the course of a few weeks and then return to their mother. Two were each found as individual lost babies, sick, near death, and starving.
Smart, hungry and with boundless curiousity, they are a challenge and a privilege to shepherd into wild and free adulthood! Please enjoy these photos, made as discreetly as possible during the course of their care. We respect their privacy, we protect their wildness and we make sure they can hunt and forage – this is at the heart of raising all orphaned wild babies. It’s serious work, filled with physical, mental and emotional challenges. It also takes cold hard cash. Thank you for helping us give these 8 Gray Fox kits the second chance they needed and deserved.
2025 has been a heck of year, so far and we still have months to go. As is true every Summer, it’s at this point of the year that we really need you. Our coffers are low and the need is still high!
After 16 years of building our digital community of support, it’s time for us to reimagine and recreate a less toxic environment that reaches more people to secure the success of our mission!
Bird Ally X co-founder and Humboldt Wildlife Care Center/bax director, (me) talks about the successes of the past, the challenges of our present moment, and our commitment to the future.
Your support is critical. Without you, we are nearly paralyzed. Please help us meet this years;a challenges – wild baby season is well under way!
Thank you for everything, especially your love for the Wild, and of course, our Wild Neighbors.
Special to our website, Humboldt WIldlife Care Center’s Assistant Wildlife Rehabilitation Manager, Lucinda Adamson, tells the story of a pretty usual patient.
Working at a wildlife rehabilitation facility, you never know what to expect when answering the phone. Often it’s someone who has found a sick or injured animal and they are hoping they’ve found the correct place to bring the animal. They have! Sometimes it’s someone who is having a conflict with a wild animal in or around their house. We can help with that too! And then there’s the myriad of other calls that are impossible to predict. In late March, one of those unusual calls came in when someone called asking for help with an interesting situation…there was a Ringtail stuck in a washing machine.
A Ringtail in a washing machine? We repeated to make sure we had heard that correctly. Ringtails are not the most common animal to encounter. Although not rare, the small nocturnal carnivores are solitary and elusive, not often seen. We have treated only 6 Ringtails at Humboldt Wildlife Care Center since 2012.
Gathering more information from the caller, we learned that they were an employee at the recycling center in McKinleyville. The Ringtail had been discovered while they were processing an old washing machine that had recently been dropped off. This changed the scenario quite a bit. If the Ringtail had been found trapped where they lived, then leaving the machine open and providing a ramp for the animal to climb out on their own is usually the first advice we give. This is a common scenario with large holes in the ground, foundational window wells, dumpsters, etc. But this individual was potentially far removed from their home, and not knowing how long they had been trapped, we needed to evaluate their health before anything else could happen.
Safely capturing the small, fast, agile animal without getting bit and without the Ringtail getting loose and lost amongst all the large trucks and piles of debris at the recycling center could be a very challenging task. We sent an experienced rescue team out right away armed with nets, sheets, leather gloves, and excited well wishes. While no one ever wants to see any animal in distress, it’s still an undeniably rare experience and perk of the job to be able to see and help unique animals like a Ringtail when they are in need.
When staff arrived at the recycling center, we found the employee who had called standing guard over the washing machine in question. Fortunately, he had been keeping watch to make sure no one else accidentally moved the machine and ensuring the Ringtail didn’t get lost or become further injured. Wearing our leather gloves and with the net held at the ready in case the animal made a break for it, we cautiously opened the lid while simultaneously covering the opening with the sheet so we could safely evaluate the situation.
Coming eye to eye with the Ringtail, we first noted that they were, thankfully, fairly alert. Great for their overall health but it could make catching them more difficult. They must have been quite scared as the sounds of heavy machinery moving large piles of metal in the large warehouse were deafeningly loud. Luckily, with the confidence of many years experience handling wild animals, we were able to safely and quickly grab the frightened Ringtail and secure them in a box to transport them back to our clinic in Manila. We were also very fortunate to learn that the employees knew that this particular washing machine had come down from Hoopa, which would prove invaluable information when it came time to release the Ringtail back where they belonged.
Upon initial exam, our staff rehabilitators discovered that this adult male was slightly thin and moderately dehydrated but had no physical injuries. With his trademark tail longer than his body, big round eyes and short ears, he was ridiculously cute! Treating his dehydration was first on the agenda. Subcutaneous fluids were provided to overcome his hydration deficit. He was otherwise stable so we moved him to outside housing where he could have more privacy and de-stress from his ordeal. Almost immediately he climbed the wall and found a high spot where he could feel safer. A varied diet of rats, fruit, and insects was offered which he readily ate.
Over the next few days we monitored the Ringtail’s hydration, providing more fluid support as needed. We ran lab tests and treated his parasites.
Within a week, his condition had improved dramatically and it was time to take him back to his mountain home in Hoopa. Once his box was opened in a small forest clearing, he wasted little time observing his new surroundings before he ran from his box and into the cover of brush.
It was an honor to be able to provide the care he needed and return him to the place where he belonged. Thank you so much for supporting our work so we can continue to help our wild neighbors in need.
