Wild baby season 2026 is off to a roaring start! Between April 26 and May 26 Humboldt Wildlife Care Center/bird ally x admitted more than 200 orphaned or injured wild animals, nearly all of them this year’s young. Downy Woodpeckers in McKinleyville who lost their tree in the high winds of mid-May, Crows in Crescent City who lost their nest tree too, Canada Goslings found running up the road Fieldbrook, a Robin fledgling cuaght be a cat in Shelter Cove – these are just some of the youngsters who were off to a rough start for their wild and free lives.
American Robin home again in Shelter CoveNetting a young Black Phiebe for release evaluationA Steller’s Jay in a fledging boxOur newest aviary, with Jays as first clientsFeeding a JayA Gosling surveys freedom at the Arcata MarshGslings and ducklings in careFeeding nectar to Anna’s Hummingbird nestlings.
Your support is the only thing keeping our doors open. This has been a very challenging year for a variety of reasons, and the economy is definitely one of them. We’re always in a precarious position fiscally speaking, but this year is starting to get terrifying. We need to raise funds to cover the costs of Summer fast. We’re $5000 short for May’s expenses and June’s are coming fast. Please, can you help?
Burlington Campground of the Humboldt Redwood State Parks is just south of Weott, along the Avenue of the Giants, about 50 miles south of our facility on Humboldt Bay. It was in the parking lot of Burlington Campground that first one newly flighted Allen’s Hummingbird (Selasphorus sasin, one of the hummingbird species native to the Redwood coast) got into trouble and then soon after so did their twin. Who knows what happened? Maybe they flew too far from their nest site and were lost to their parents. Maybe their parents had done all they could but their condition was too poor for their efforts to save them. In any case first one and then the other had run out of options. They were forced to use human hands to get the help they needed to survive.
The call came in about 10 o’clock in the morning just after our daily morning meeting. A person had picked up a mite-covered hummingbird from under a parked car in the parking lot of Burlington Campground. We don’t know exactly what a hummingbird has to do to make a person stop and see them under a car. But this youngster did it. And soon their sibling was found on the other side of the lot, and in the same condition.
We sent one of our clinic staff down to the campground. The region we serve is enormous! Between Del Norte, Trinity, western Siskiyou and northern Mendocino counties we cover an area the size of New Jersey. So, fifty miles down US 101 is a pretty ordinary trek.
Once at our clinic we gave each tiny bird (3.1 and 3.4 grams!) a thorough exam. Both were capable of flight but lacked the energy. We offered them long sips of the special nectar we prepare that provides a balanced diet for young hummingbirds. We gave them medications to control the feather mites that plagued them. (always especially grateful to hit the shower after dealing with feather parasites!!)
Parasites are usually a pretty good problem to have, mainly because it’s an easy one to solve. Just take the medicine that kills that parasite and boom! – your energy is your own again.
The one who was lighter by three-tenths of a gram was also more lethargic. The bigger bird was enthusiastic about being fed while the weaker had to be encouraged to eat – still it took two days for them to recover sufficiently to be able to thermoregulate, that is maintain a normal temperature, without our help.
A hummingbird, if you haven’t noticed, is a very small bird. As mentioned these guys weigh about three grams. I weigh about seventy thousand grams. The power imbalance is terrifying. They make me feel like a giant clod of mud, a dumb rock ready to roll down the mountain and crush the town. After four days in care, with nectar in a feeder and fresh flowers arranged throughout their aviary, we stopped handling them and allowed them a couple days of recovery without being bothered or, frankly, endangered by our looming gargantuan selves.
After two days of “self-care”, it was time to drive them home.
Hey, you have to live and work somewhere and we have it pretty good. The Avenue of the Giants is takes you into one of the world’s splendors. It’s a great office we have here.
We were short-staffed that day but when our chief photographer, co-founder, expert baby bird reuniter and BAX art director, Laura Corsiglia arrived at the release site needing to open the box and close the shutter over and over again, park staff enthusiastically joined in to help release the young birds – they knew the exact giant Rhododendron that hummingbirds frequent. Check out the pics.
there is no better task in the known world than giving a weak hummingbird the food they desperately need.Definitely thinking outside the box!This is what success means…
Your support makes our work possible. Thank you for ensuring that our wild neighbors in need have some human hands at their disposal. It means the world to all of us.
Thank you to everyone who played a role – no matter how small – in keeping our doors open all year and promoting peaceful coexistence with the Wild! You’re the tops! You’re the Mona Lisa!
After some unforeseen delays, we were able to begin putting up our new raptor aviary. Soon it will be soaring!
Your support makes our work possible, including re-building our facility after our sudden move two years ago. Thank you for keeping our doors open and our patients provided with care.
These three Cedar Waxwings (Bombycilla cedrorum) are a joy to care for, and the reward is incredible. But we cannot pay our bills with our happiness and fulfillment, though that would be incredibly useful if we could considering how rich in those things we are. However, there is a solution! You! Your support makes this work possible. Please donate if you can.
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.
