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!
A 5 gram baby Barn Swallow (Hirundo rustica) whose nest fell. We tried to get the nest back up, but the parents had already left the site. Now the baby will be with us until old enough for release.
We are deep in the middle of Wild Baby Season! In the few months from the end of May to the end of August we admit half of the patients we’ll treat all year and 95% of these patients are orphaned babies. Yes, it’s a lot of mouths to feed. Yes, without your help, we’d be unable to meet the challenge. Yes, being able to help so many innocent your animals get a second chance at wild freedom is a joy and a privilege beyond measure.
Mallard ducklings (Anas platyrhynchos) we admitted when they were 30 gram yellow puffballs, now 700 grams and ready for duckweed in the Wild!
In the Wild!
The madness has been underway since early April, but now we’re really cooking. The busiest weeks are just ahead. We really do need your help. Please donate if you can. Our facility, our staff, our utility providers, and most of all, our patients, are depending on you!!!
Tree squirrels, in this case a Western Gray (Sciurus griseus), are semi-flighted!
At release, the ground wasn’t on this Western Gray Squirrel’s list of things to do.
Canada goslings (Branta canadensis) old enough to be on their own make their way out of the transport crates/
These orphaned goslings have each other, which is more than many wild orphans have. Helping wild babies reach maturity is easier if they have some buddies, or conspecifics, as we call them professionally.
Your support is critical always, but especially now. The next 10 weeks we will need to feed hundreds of wild babies, buy a lot of medicine, a lot of electricity, a lot of water, a lot telephone and a lot of staff hours. Your donation goes directly to the care we provide. Please help! Thank you so much!!!
A mom goes out for food. “I’ll be right back,” she tells her kids … but she doesn’t comes back. Her kids keep getting hungrier. Still, she doesn’t come back. Eventually, in desperation, they go out, maybe to look for her, or maybe out of confusion. But now they’re lost. And still she doesn’t come back.
This scenario unfolds across the season, across the years, across the history of mothers and children everywhere over time. Usually it ends in the death of the family. Unless someone intervenes.
At a facilities building on the Cal Poly Humboldt campus, earlier in May, a person who works there found two young Pacific Wrens (Troglodytes pacificus), who’d left the nest a little too soon. Nearby he found a dead adult wren.
Two young Pacific Wrens, just before learning to fly, admitted to Humboldt Wildlife Care Center
When we admitted them into care at Humboldt Wildlife Care Center, both young birds were dehydrated. They were also pretty excited about the mealworms we offered them. One of the babies was nearly flighted and the other wasn’t far behind. We set them up in our baby bird nursery and put them on a regular feeding schedule every 30 minutes. As soon as we could we went back to the rescue site to see if the second parent was present, so we could return the babies to them, but sadly, there were no living adults to be seen. The care of these youngsters was in our hands
Because they were so close to being able to fly it wasn’t long before their attempts produced actual lift and the old magic of leaving the ground under your own power was new again.
The siblings left the temporary housing we have for baby birds about to fledge directly into one of our songbird aviaries. Here we continued to feed them mealworms every 45 mintues to an hour until they were finding the food all by themselves. As soon as their flight was strong and they were feeding themselves completely, we took them back to the place where they were found, a little bit deeper into the nearby forest, and they were free.
“How did I get up here? I flew!!” said the fledgling Wren.
“Please release me, let me go!!!”
Cryptic coloring matches the west coast forests perfectly!
The loss of parents is usually a tragedy that a nest of babies doesn’t survive, but this time, thanks to someone who saw the problem and who called us, the young were given a second chance at the wild freedom for which they were intended. Your support is why there is a facility in our region that make these second chances possible. Your support is why there are mealworms in Manila! Your support built the songbird aviary that provided the security and opportunity to learn that would have been provided by their parents. Your support makes this work possible! Thank you!!
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.
Our annual holiday card! Just mailed out today! You’re support is so important to us – you make everything possible! Thank for another beuatiful year caring for our region’s orphaned and injured wild animals. It’s been a good one. It’s been a tough one. Please help if you can.
Late on a Friday afternoon, a woman walking past a shuttered restaurant heard something that made her stop. Looking around she found the source – a large bin filled with old cooking oil – and also containing two juvenile raccoons. She called Humboldt Wildlife Care Center. Staff immediately was dispatched .
On scene we found two raccoons trapped in a large bin that contained several gallons of used cooking oil. We were saddened to find one of the raccoons had drowned.
The living raccoon was completely soaked in cooking oil. A small, juvenile male, he was in a lousy mood. With the oil soaking his fur he was cold and hungry. Tomorrow we could determine a course of treatment and determine the strategy for bathing him, but for the night we set him up with heat support and a decent meal. Perhaps many wouldn’t agree, but the raccoon found the whole fish, the egg, the live mealworms and the frozen rat we’d thawed for him to be appetizing. In the morning the food was gone.
We kept him indoors with heat support and food for a couple of days to make sure he was strong and ready to be washed. His size was working out in his favor. He was small enough that experienced staff members had no difficulty restraining him while he was lathered up with dish detergent (seventh generation free and clear) and rinsed of the foul smelling old oil which had darkened the suds and fouled the tub.
And then the bomb cyclone hit. This gave us plenty of opportunity to ensure that his fur would again protect him from the elements – the several days pre- and post-wash were good for his weight too. He’s a good looking raccoon and he looked it, even in the rain. A week after he’d been found in a situation that surely would have killed him without intervention, we released back to his wild freedom, a second chance in his grasp.
Disappearing into the real right before our eyes…
Your support, of course is why there was a place for the person who discovered this guy trapped in oil to call. Your support is what gave this raccoon a second shot. Your support is why a facility to properly provide his care exists. Thank you for helping us meet our mission, serving our region’s injured, orphaned (and sometimes half-drowned in cooking oil) wild animals in need of helping hand.
