This Red-throated Loon (Gavia stellata) got a second chance because your support keeps our seabird pools functioning and our doors open to the many faces of the Wild who call our region home in their hour of need. Thank you.
Please support our work if you can.
After several days of eating berries from branches and no longer being fed by care providers, it was time to release the young Waxwings! Fortunately Arcata is filled with Cedar Waxwings and Berries at this time of year (late September) so releasing them was a cinch!
Without your support, none of this would be possible. Please donate if you can. Every little bit helps!
A Storm-petrel is not a bird that you will automatically see just because you signed up for 3 score and ten on good old Mother Earth. Smaller than an American Robin (Turdus migratorius) but spending all of their lives at sea, Leach’s Storm-petrels (Hydrobates leucorhous), the tiny cousins of Albatross, Fulmars, Shearwaters and other tubenoses (Procellariiformes) are infrequently observed, yet at Humboldt Wildlife Care Center we admit one or two every year, and in 2019 and 2024 we admitted dozens after bad ocean conditions brought many ashore.
At the end of the August, this little giant rode a fishing vessel back into port at Crescent City. Volunteers drove the storm-petrel down to our facility in Manila. After a few days enjoying our saltwater pool, they were in good shape, ready to get back to sea. We release these birds at the end of the day, because their small size makes them easy prey close to shore where gulls hunt for dinner. While we don’t begrudge gulls the right to eat, we prefer to not see our patients munched on as they re-orient themselves to their new condition of freedom.
Your support makes it possible for us to serve an enormous region that extends from Northern Mendocino County to Southern Oregon and from Weaverville to the middle of the Sea! Thank you for keeping our doors open! And if you can, please support us now, as we wind up our busy season and prepare for the wintering seabirds who are surely on their way!
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.
A Really Big Day at Humboldt Wildlife Care Center/bird ally x!!!
Thanks to the Oiled Wildlife Care Network, for over thirty years of responding to wildlife injured and displaced by oil spills!
Thanks for coming to see us! In the video I failed to adequately acknowledge the people who came to visit! Rats! But we’ll take care of it here: Victoria Hall, the new Director, Frankie Lill, wildlife planning specialist (and haiku enthusiast!), Danny Vickers, wildlife planning specialist, and Wendy Massey, a friend and colleague I’ve known since my first oil spill response, 23 years ago, then called the San Mateo Mystery Spills, now known as the Luckenbach spills, from the sunken (1953) SS Jacob Luckenbach.
Your support is makes us able to be a part of this incredible network of care providers ready to jump into action for oil spill-impacted wild animals. And right now, at the end of Summer, and our very busy season, we need you to keep us even keeled and underway! Thank you for your past current and future support!
A quick video made at day’s end, the beginning of September, reflecting on our current state and our needs….
Your support makes everything we do possible. We need you. Thank you
Look! A soundtrack!
First feeding of the morning, 7:45 am.
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.
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.
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.
