Freedom’s Greetings

Posted on December 6, 2016 by Monte Merrick

Each year we send a card to our mailing list offering our thanks and asking for continued support! Here’s this years! Expect it in your mailbox soon if you’re on our snail mail list! Freedom’s Greeting!

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Season’s Greetings, Friend of Wildlife!

What a tumultuous year 2016 has been! Yet from a contentious US election to increasingly alarming news regarding our shared environment, through it all, we’ve been here, providing care for our region’s injured and orphaned wild animals, helping people peacefully resolve conflicts with wild animals, and our Wildlife Ambassador program has gone to grade schools and social clubs promoting co-existence with our wild neighbors.

In 2016, Bird Ally X put on workshops teaching important skills to the next generation of wildlife rehabilitators, as well as worked with state and national professional associations to provide continuing education opportunities for rehabilitators of every skill level.

It’s a tough world, ours – and preparation is required. Any raccoon can tell you that curiosity and learning are keys to a successful life.

Each year we raise over two dozen orphaned raccoons. Lacking a mother, their education falls on us.

So we prepare our young patients to forage for appropriate, natural food, become familiar with natural features, even find fish in a stream in our simulated river that runs through our raccoon housing!

Fruit is found on trees, insects in logs, fish in streams – this knowledge plus a healthy fear of human beings is our recipe for raccoon success.

In some ways, we are in the same boat as our raccoon patients, struggling to live right, facing a separation from Mother Earth that we didn’t ask for yet need to cross in order to survive and thrive.

Your support allows us to teach and learn. Each year our care improves. Each year we reach more people. Each year we strive for a better world, no matter who thinks they run the show, no matter what calamity surrounds us. No matter what fate we’ll share, little by little, with your support, we’ll continue to pay back our debt to the Wild.

Thank you for being here for us, our Wild Neighbors, and all those who love the Wild in 2016. We wish you a warm and beautiful holiday and a joyful New Year. We look forward to meeting our mission with your support in 2017.

In alliance with the Wild,

Bird Ally X and Humboldt Wildlife Care Center

Volunteer Appreciation/Rent Party!

Posted on December 2, 2016December 3, 2016 by Monte Merrick

Every year BAX honors our dedicated volunteers with a show and a party! And we invite everyone to come help us celebrate their devotion and love for our wild neighbors. Without our volunteers, our work wouldn’t be possible. Please come join us and also help us raise much needed funds to cover the cost of our rent!

Music by The Neighbors, Medicine Baul and Rob DiPerna! Dance and Aerial Dance perfrmed by Leslie Castellano and Jessica Rubin! Poetry too (from your host and HWCC director, Monte Merrick (that’s me))

Join us Saturday, December 10, in Old Town Eureka!

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A Very Lucky Hawk (cool video!)

Posted on November 30, 2016 by Monte Merrick

On November 28, on US 101 where it winds through the gas stations and fast food joints of Eureka California, a Sharp-shinned Hawk (Accipiter striatus) was in hot pursuit of a Sparrow. She caught the Sparrow but was hit by a car in the heavy traffic. A quick-thinking, kind-hearted man saw her get hit, saw her lying on the ground at risk of being hit again and pulled her from the roadway. The Sparrow was dead.

A staff member from our clinic, Humboldt Wildlife Care Center, met him at a nearby restaurant – he’d found a brown paper bag to put her in.

During her admission examination we found no broken bones or any other major injuries, just a small laceration near her mouth. She was stunned and disoriented. We gave her a mild anti-inflammatory pain reliever and moved her to our raptor aviary. She immediately flew to the highest perch. We left her with food for the night.

The next morning her food was gone and she was flying restlessly around her enclosure. After another examination we determined that she was fully recovered – in fact she was going drive herself crazy and maybe even injure herself. Captivity was no longer helping her. We released her later that day, a few blocks from where she was found.

We may think of the wild as a place we might visit. It’s hard for some of us to see the dumpster behind a restaurant or the overhang of a gas station as habitat for the wild. But it is. The wild has no boundaries. The wild is where we all live – hawks, sparrows, people. The Wild is everywhere, always.

Your support provided everything that the kind, quick-thinking man needed to save this hawk’s life. Without your support there would have been no one he could call – no one to provide medicine, no one to supply an appropriate aviary for this hawk to recover from her ordeal. Your support makes all of this possible. We’re counting on you!!
Print (Want to help us meet our end of year fundraising goal? Click here to donate now!)

Phalarope Beats the Odds!

Posted on November 28, 2016November 29, 2016 by Monte Merrick

A week ago, a young woman attending Humboldt State University found a small bird struggling in the middle of the street where she lives. As a wildlife student, she recognized the bird as a Phalarope, a sandpiper-like bird, smaller than a Robin but larger than most Sparrows. She also knew that the bird was in trouble.

Once admitted for care, we identified the bird as a Red Phalarope (Phalaropus fulicarius). From a distance distinguishing between the different species of Phalarope when they aren’t in breeding plumage can be tricky, but we’ve sadly gotten a lot of recent “in the hand” opportunities to identify these birds. This is the eighth Red Phalarope we’ve admitted this month.

This patient was thin and weak and also had a deep laceration on the underside of her right wing. Fortunately for her, she also had a ferocious appetite and a strong desire to get on with her business. Within 5 days she’d completed her course of anti-biotics, within 6 days her laceration had healed well enough that we knew it wouldn’t be a problem for her and within 7 days she’d regained her missing body mass. We released her this morning back to Humboldt Bay, in the same locattion one of our staff had seen Red Phalaropes successfully foraging the previous day.

The women who brought this bird in to our clinic were very grateful that we were here – grateful that there is some place to take an injured wild animal. People who find injured wild animals often express this relief that we are here – they often say they don’t know what else they would have done, just that they couldn’t let the injured victim of our human-built world suffer. Often they have no money – and they’re relieved again that we don’t charge them for taking the animal into care. Frankly, it feels great to be thanked for the work we do – to know that being here is making the world a little better. And that’s why we ask for your support each time.

[Want to help us meet our critical goal of $7000 in November? Click here to Donate Now!]

Thank you for making wildlife rescue in Humboldt County a reality! Thank you for making all of our work possible. When people thank us for being here, they’re thanking you!

All photos: Laura Corsiglia / Bird Ally X

Aquatic Birds in Care

Posted on November 21, 2016November 21, 2016 by Monte Merrick

Every year, as our busy wild baby season comes to a close, aquatic birds, who breed elsewhere, come back to the Pacific Coast to overwinter. The famed Aleutian Cackling Geese, Brant, Grebes, Loons, seaducks, dabbling ducks, all use our relatively mild winters with historically food-rich waters to while away the hibernal months.

At Humboldt Wildlife Care Center, the arrival of wintering aquatic birds means a dramatic change in our caseload. Already this Autumn we have provided care for dozens of adult and juvenile aquatic birds.

For adult birds, this season is a time of comparative ease, without the responsibilities of rearing young. For this year’s young, this is their first season in the world of adults, a time of learning – learning to hunt, where to find food, learning their way around the real world, becoming independent.

The real world naturally holds threats – not every juvenile bird lives. Adults die in storms. They are caught by predators. Old age takes its toll as well. Still, it’s rare that we admit patients suffering from these natural calamities and processes.

Most patients are admitted in poor body condition – emaciated, anemic and dehydrated – obviously suffering from starvation.

This year, the usually “productive” California Current is not providing the quantity of fish needed to support the wintering population. As we noted earlier in the year, Common Murres, who raise their young on the North Coast experienced complete colony failure this year due to the absence of appropriate prey fish. (Even at our clinic we are struggling to stay in supply of food to feed our patients, due to this shortage!)

There are other causes of injury. Some of our patients this season were entangled in derelict fishing gear, and no doubt we will treat more. Derelict fishing gear is a global problem that makes itself known locally everywhere.

Typically each year we treat waterfowl, geese and ducks, that have been legally shot by hunters, but not killed, that have been found later by someone else. And sometimes we admit aquatic birds with traumatic injuries that we can’t ascribe to any particular cause – wing fractures, leg fractures that may be from collisions with human infrastructure, boats, battering surf – we just don’t know.

In all cases, however, our trained staff and purpose-built facilities allow us to provide excellent care for aquatic birds – noe of which would be possible without your generous support. So as we continue through this season, scroll the photos below to see some of our recent and current patients. And get out and enjoy our wintering wild aquatic neighbors! And as usual, if you can help us meet our mission with financial support, please do! We need you!

Northern Shoveler (Anas clypeata)in care, moments before her release evaluation, demonstrating that explosive flight is well within her capabilities.

Female Northern Shoveler during her release evaluation exam

Northern Shoveler wing, extended for examination. Note her delicate blue and green speculum.
Northern Shoveler flies free!

Western Grebe (Aechmophorus occidentalis) feet! Very awkward on land, in the water, these feet become propellers, as the bird swiftly pursues fish for her meals.
Western Grebe wing.
Each bird receives nutritional support, is treated for parasites and given supplemental vitamins while in care.

Like many aquatic bird species, Western grebes are social and seek the comfort and safety of a like-minded community.
Even a Pacific Loon (Gavia pacifica) can be part of the gang!

Surf Scoter (Melanitta perspicillata) being released after two weeks in care, regaining lost body weight and strength.

Another Western Grebe released.
This Belted Kingfisher (Megaceryle alcyon) collided with a building suffering very little injury. Still this male needed a few days to recover. Upon release in his home territory at Big Lagoon he immediately circled around calling and joined a female, his likely mate.

An incredible moment as the Kingfisher flew a circle around his caregivers immediately after release.

Belted Kingfishers, like all aquatic birds, require specialized care. Bird Ally X was founded as a means to bring quality aquatic bird care to the more remote areas of our coast where experience and resources are scant. This male’s care and release at Big Lagoon is a testament to that mission.
In an awesome update to a recent story, this Pacific Loon, who was found by HWCC staff on the beach in Samoa entangled in a discarded fishing net, was just released today!
Releasing any patient is an immeasurable reward, but in another way we have a direct measure – your support. This Loon’s second chance was bought and paid for by your donation! Thank you!

Your support for our work during every season is critical. We have nearly a dozen aquatic birds in care right now, in addition to our other patients. We anticipate more to come. Each month brings us new challenges – some predictable, like the return of wintering seabirds, others less predictable, such as failing prey fish populations, sudden storms, and other emergencies. Being able to rely on you allows us to prepare for both. Your donation (click here) to help us meet our November goal of $7000 will go directly to the care of these remarkable birds who live so near to us, but whose lives are so different. Thank you!!!

Shocked Yellow-rumped Warbler Thought Everything Was Clear! Didn’t See the Glass!

Posted on November 10, 2016 by Monte Merrick

Last Friday a compassionate young man at his job site off Myrtle Avenue in Eureka found this Yellow -rumped Warbler (Setophaga coronata) on the ground beneath a window. After giving him a safe place to rest realized the bird needed care.

How alarming it is to see the passage ahead, the clear sky, the chosen path and believe it so much that you move in that direction without question, only to come to a hard and brutal invisible barrier. Window strikes kill hundreds of millions of birds in the United States each year!

This little guy was lucky. He was quickly brought into care and received anti-inflammatory medicine and a safe place to recover. Three days later he was released! (see video below of him back in trees, looking for insects)

If a bird strikes your window the first thing you should is move him gently into a box and call us. While a bird may fly off after an hour or so of rest, we don’t know that they are truly able to survive without care. It is surmised that many birds die of cerebral hemorrhging in the first 24 hours after the collision.

For ideas on how to prevent window strikes, check out this site.

As always, we are here to help wild animals who are innocently caught in the many pitfalls, traps and obstacles our modern world puts in their path. Your help ensures that we will always be here. Thank you for your generous support!

A Personal Letter from one of our Co-founders – Why We Need You.

Posted on November 7, 2016November 7, 2016 by Monte Merrick

Dear Supporters and fellow Wildlife Lovers;

I feel a pressing need to address you directly, as a person, as a wildlife rehabilitator, as someone committed to correcting the injustices our built world consistently inflicts on our wild neighbors, and also, and perhaps most significantly, as the person who is most directly responsible for communicating our work, our goals, and our needs to you, our supporters, followers and fellow wildlife lovers.

Talking about our work is easy. I am deeply committed to it. I love what we do. I feel privileged to be able to work so closely with wild animals. I am grateful for all that having been so close to unfettered freedom has taught me. Standing up in front of a room, putting my thoughts on paper, posting on the internet, is natural for me – as natural as rising early every summer morning and crossing the Arcata bottoms on my way to Humboldt Wildlife Care Center, our clinic in Bayside, to prep food for a couple dozen orphaned raccoons, offer mealworms to nestling songbirds, and return calls from people who’ve found an injured wild animal, or help them resolve a conflict with an animal who has wandered across one of our arbitrary and unnatural lines we’ve drawn between our world and theirs.

[You can click here to Donate Now]

My comfort zone includes some pretty awful things – broken wings, a car-smashed Opossum mother with babies still in her pouch, a thrush torn apart by a housecat and still breathing. My training and experience have taught me how to set aside immediate feelings and take action. It’s what I do. It’s what all wildlife rehabilitators do – every day of the year – here at Humboldt Wildlife Care Center, and in every other clinic – from well-funded organizations with a million dollar budget to the garage and shed of a “backyard rehabber” – which is by far the most common.

BAX supports all wildlife rehabilitators with education and workshops. As rehabilitators we know how critical good information is to do the job that we are each so passionate about – it’s one of our three primary missions.

We also provide direct care for wild animals in distress – at HWCC, but also as responders to oil spills around our state and beyond. One of our co-founders, Marie Travers, is currently in British Columbia, Canada, working with Focus Wildlife responding to a maritime accident that spilled thousand of gallons of fuel into a pristine habitat near the Great Bear Rainforest, one of the largest remaining unspoiled temperate rainforests in the world.

Promoting co-existence with the Wild is another of our critical missions. This takes many forms, including what you are reading right now. We go to schools. We go to conferences. We rely on the support of local media to help us bring a voice for the voiceless.

Arguing for justice is difficult and emotionally costly work, but it is very gratifying. The desire for justice, the urge to rise to the defense of the marginalized, is common, and who is more marginalized than the skunk hit by a car and carelessly, thoughtlessly, left by the side of the road, bloating and forgotten? There is an adage among conservationists, that “every victory is temporary, every loss permanent.” We feel the truth of this each day. And by and large, we remain undaunted.

But for me, there is one task that requires me to steel my nerves, gather my courage, and plunge in. And that is asking for your support – your money – your check. It’s obvious, of course, that all of what I’ve described above – the thousands of animals we’ve cared for, the thousands more we’ve prevented from becoming casualties, the people we’ve reached, the wild lives and the human lives we’ve helped – can’t be done in our world without money. So, regardless of my discomfort, I ask for donations. I ask often. Some people might be good at it. Maybe I am, I don’t know. I just know that what we need and what we have don’t match. So comfortable or not, good at it or not, I have to do it – just like I’m doing now.

Every month I set a goal. The last few months the goal was $7000 – honestly, that’s not quite enough, and if it wasn’t for the holiday and end of year fundraising, as well as a reliable foundation grant, we wouldn’t meet our needs on $84,000 a year – a terrible crisis – we can’t spend what we don’t have. Yet, the last two months we haven’t even come close to meeting our $7000 goal. I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t worried.

Worrying about the care we provide is part of my job – I accept it – worrying about our volunteers and staff – that they’re being treated well and getting the opportunities to learn they want and need – is also part of my job. Worrying about the money? It’s part of my job, but it’s the one that scares me the most. The other aspects are in my control. Our quality of care, our intern program – those are ours to make as good as we can. The support required, well, that depends on me asking, but it really depends on our community providing. We are only as strong as you make us.

We have a relatively small budget. In our dreams, we’d have $250,000 a year to spend. We’d be able to fund every program we’ve designed and pay the staff meager salaries to get it done. As it is, we make it all work, for now, on about $100,000 per year. We have one full time and one part time staff person. Everything else goes to our patients and our wildlife ambassador birds. Right now, we are $10,000 short of our usual annual donations. So far, we are continuing to meet our mission – you can scroll though our past stories to see the work we’ve done – from returning a local Bald Eagle who’d suffered lead poisoning to the wild, to delivering our aquatic bird workshop to rehabilitators on the Oregon coast. Yet, we have expenses, such as food and medicine, still unpaid from our busy summer season. Our suppliers know that we work hard, but that doesn’t mean they give their products away.

Now as wintering seabirds and geese return to our region, our expenses will increase again. Additionally, this is the time of year when repairs and maintenance to our facility must be completed.

In short, we need your help.

As this year’s contentious election season comes to a close, and the anxiety of our uncertain future looms – climate chaos, toxic spills, international instability, here at home, no matter what happens, our wild neighbors will need us. Wild animals will still be the most marginalized victims of the hazards of the world we humans have built. And we’ll need to be here for them.

Only your support makes that possible. Which is why I fight my discomfort and ask for your generous donation. Please, we need you. [You can click here to Donate Now]

Thank you for your past support, and thank you for enduring my constant appeals.

Take care,
Monte Merrick
co-director Bird Ally X, director Humboldt Wildlife Care Center

Halloween Mask? No Problem!

Posted on October 31, 2016October 31, 2016 by Monte Merrick

It’s Halloween and two of our Raccoon patients were released! These masked juveniles won’t be trick or treating the neighborhoods however. They’ll be strictly wild, thanks to your support!

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There is still time to help us close in on our October goal of $7000 – although time is running out! Hopefully we won’t turn into a pumpkin at midnight!

Click here to support our work!

Limited Edition Merganser T-shirt – Art by Laura Corsiglia

Posted on October 23, 2016 by Monte Merrick

Mergansers are awesome ducks. Everyone thinks so! Now you can support our work and show the world your love for these remarkable birds. Celebrating the mysterious beauty of the female Common Merganser, these shirts were printed locally by Blackjack Humboldt taken from original art made by internationally known artist Laura Corsiglia (who happens to be a co-founder and co-director of Bird Ally X! Laura also takes most of our photographs!)

Available in many sizes, the t-shirts are 100% organic cotton. But we have a limited number! We’re offering them for $35! Stop by our clinic in Bayside to get yours! We’re open every day from 9 to 5. Not in the area? Well you can order online (there will be a $4.99 shipping/handling fee)! Just click here.

It’s a thrill to be able to offer these shirts. The original drawing was done as a gift for another co-director but it’s too lovely to keep to ourselves. Vote Merganser!

A Falcon’s Peregrination Through Recovery

Posted on October 22, 2016October 22, 2016 by Monte Merrick

As September drew to a close, on its last Monday, a young Peregrine Falcon (Falco peregrinus) was hit by a car on Samoa Boulevard (route 255) near the intersection with V street, just west of Arcata. Samoa is a highway notorious for its danger to our wild neighbors. Every day a casual survey will find the dead body of someone – a raccoon, a gull, a skunk, a coot, or an opossum – and who knows how many small birds are never seen, who’ve been hit and killed and thrown into the vegetation on either side of the road. Samoa Blvd is a ridiculous name for the route – it should be called the Wildlife Watchout.

[We need your help! We are several thousand dollars away from reaching our October goal of $7000! Our work relies completely on your support. If you can, please donate today! Every little bit helps.]

This falcon was spotted, alive, sitting by the side of the road. A kind-hearted man stopped and scooped the world’s fastest animal (242mph in a dive!) and brought him to our Bayside wildlife hospital, Humboldt Wildlife Care Center.

It is thought by some that Peregrine falcons got their name from people who captured them as juveniles who’d wandered from their nest site, since those nests were usually too remote to reach or even find. It’s not very clear if this is the case, and the source material is vague – but if accurate, since the theory alludes to falconry and the practice of stealing wild falcons and keeping them captive, then we have a parallel in our own time and place.

For many of the last several years, a Peregrine falcon pair have nested in high profile location near Eureka. Local birders and ornithologists tried to keep the site a secret to protect the falcon family from falconers who might try to steal a juvenile. As with the centuries old conjectured etymology, it would have been nearly impossible to reach the nest’s location, but as soon as the juveniles fledge (fly from nest for the first time) they would become easy targets. In fact, over the last few years HWCC has often been called in to give one or more of the young falcons a helping hand, since their first flights usually take them into the heart of downtown Eureka.

A juvenile Peregrine Falcon in care at HWCC in 2012. This youngsters only problem was that her (or his) first flight from his nest landed her on Eureka’s waterfront. Too young to know better, she was easily picked up by a well-intended person and brought to us. After a day of observation to insure she was in good health, we returned her to her family.

When we performed this Peregrine falcon’s initial examination, he (presumed male due to smaller stature) was in good health with the exception of a fractured right ulna. As fractures go, this is one of best he could have gotten. Whether bird, human, other mammal, even dinosaur, vertebrates with limbs have ulnas – it’s one of the many clues that we really are all related. The ulna is the thicker of the two bones, the other being the radius, that make up our forearm, extending from elbow to wrist. Since his radius was intact, it formed a natural splint. A couple of weeks spent with his wing immobilized, his ulna had a very good chance of healing – this bird’s prognosis for release was excellent.

Receiving medicine during initial examination.

Keeping a fierce, wild being in a small enclosure for 2 to 3 weeks is risky – especially for the wild being. While his prognosis for recovery was good, in captivity, anything can happen – accidents with the housing, stress-related trauma – nearly every advance in the husbandry of our patients that rehabilitators have made has come at the cost of patient’s life. So with this in mind we provided a perch that would prevent pressure sores on the bottoms of his feet that can develop when a bird is grounded. We housed him in a soft-sided pen to prevent injuries to his unwrapped wing. We kept him isolated from our noise and commotion to reduce the stress of being unable to put the distance between that he would have greatly preferred.

Every so often we checked the fracture site in order to track the healing process. At last, after 18 days, the fracture was stable with a well formed calloused around the break. We removed the wrap and moved the falcon to an outdoor aviary. To our great pleasure, he immediately burst into flight. All that was needed at this point was some time in the aviary for him to regain any lost strength and for us to make observations that let us know he would be fine upon release.

After 25 days in care, the falcon was ready to go.

Trying to evade the net while being captured for his release evaluation.

Thinking outside the box!

A new volunteer on her first release – these moments are the joy of our work.

… back into wild, blue yonder …

While we wish every patient who’d been hit by a car that we treat could have such an awesome outcome, the truth is that it’s rare that anyone survives such an impact. But for wild animals, without someone stopping to get them help, and without people like you who support our work, none who are injured would survive. If not for you, this bird, and every other patient we admit, would have been an uncounted statistic of the damage to nature caused by civilization. Thank you for your support!

Want to contribute? Click here!

All photos: Laura Corsiglia/BAX