Thanks to many donors, building our much needed raptor aviary is now underway!
Many supporters contributed with donation since our call went out in August for help. Thank you so much. And very recently, Cal Poly Humboldt professor of marketing Dr. Sarita Ray Chaudhury, who put us over the finish line with a $5000 dollar donation!
Many other donors have provided substantial help rebuilding our facility, a project that still has some distance to go before we are finished! Our colleagues at Sonoma County Wildlife Rescue have generously supported our rebuild as have Julie Buchanan and more!
Our busy Summer is winding to a close and now begins our season of building projects!
Still to come: A Pelican, Gull and Cormorant Aviary (the PGC!) (estimated cost, $7000) Small Mammal Housing! (estimated cost $4000) Specialty Aviary for Swifts and Swallows! (estimated cost $4000) Laundry facility (estimated cost $6000)
We have big plans and major goals for the future of Humboldt Wildlife Care Center. An on-staff veterinarian with a well equipped surgical suite is a must! Our goal is to have this capability, thereby reducing the number of patients who we must transport to other parts of the state for critical surgical needs, by early 2026 – that’s only 18 months away!
In other words, while great progress is being made, we still have some distance to go. Your support is still needed, and in fact will always be needed! Thank you for helping us meet our mission of rehabilitating injured and orphaned wild animals. And thank you for your love of the wild!
A Beechcraft Bonanza is not as stylish or formidable as a Bald Eagle, but still it was with a certain amount of panache that the two-tone brown, trim and speedy plane touched down on the runway of the California Redwood Coast- Humboldt County Airport the early afternoon of August 7. Since the aircraft was bearing precious cargo in the form of one very important Humbodt County resident, a male Bald Eagle who resides with us here on Humboldt Bay, quoting Neil Armstrong to mark the occasion of his happy return home was only natural, perhaps even required: The Eagle Has Landed.
The Eagle is landing at the airport in Humboldt County…
The neat little plane, owned by Eric and Cindi Choate, was flown by Eric and carried, besides the Bald Eagle, Cindi, and Luis “Lou” Rivas of Flying Tails, an animal rescue organization founded by San Francisco Bay area news anchor and private pilot, Ken Wayne. Flying Tails has a remarkable list of achievements over the years, flying animals in need of help or rescue all around the state. Flying Tails has gotten many wildlife rehabilitation patients into care and released back to the wild.
As it happens, Mr Wayne’s plane was being serviced on the day of the Eagle flight, so Lou was able to secure a ride with his friend, Eric, who also happens to be a Civil Air Patrol volunteer.
Not the aircraft in question, but it was just like this one…. a real cutie-pie!
On the first of July is when this Eagle’s story in care begins. As so often happens in our work, it began with a phone call to Humboldt Wildlife Care Center/bird ally x. The caller was reporting that a Bald Eagle appeared to be injured in their driveway. The Eagle had been there all morning and they had seen blood on one of their wings.
We launched a crew to investigate. I took one of our seasonal rehabilitation techs, Na’Mae Gray, with me to help with the rescue as well as learn the techniques of injured raptor capture. I wasn’t convinced yet that we were going to find an Eagle. Eagle calls are much more less common than false alarm Eagle calls. Every wildlife rehabilitator can you tell about the time a caller brought them what they said was a Bald Eagle baby who turned out to be a nestling Pigeon.
But in fact the injured bird was indeed an adult Bald Eagle (Haliaeetus leucocephalus)! And while he couldn’t fly, he could run like the dickens. Around the ferns in the forest above Cal Poly I chased the Eagle with Na’Mae blocking possible escape routes. Shortly I caught the wise and wily bird in my long handled net – soon he was in our crate to be transported back to our clinic in Manila. (Remember we are at a new location: 68 Mill St in Manila!)
In our exam room, HWCC staff rehabilitator Ash Shields got a chance to help with their first Bald Eagle admission examination. Although my first time was nearly 25 years ago in Seattle, I can still remember the thrill and anxiousness of holding a Bald Eagle in my hands the first time. I mean I can remember the thrill from my first time seeing a Bald Eagle in the wild (near Shasta). I knew that Ash was probably feeling a complicated mix of excitement, fear and responsibility. “I was nervous,” they said, “but in awe of the strength this eagle had, and how powerful of a bird they are!”
During the exam, we found nothing really major wrong with him. We did note his slightly smaller stature, which we took to mean that this bird is a male. He was in decent body condition. There was some bleeding from a couple of his primary feathers, but no fractures. Still, a grounded Eagle has no future – dehydration and then starvation would claim him without our intervention. It seemed like the most he would need was food and time in an aviary recovering his ability to fly. The people who found him said he’d had a fish with him they first discovered him. We conjectured that he’d tangled with an Osprey over that fish and that the Osprey had managed to get their own licks in, even though they’d lost the fish. It’s a tough old world.
Opening our transport crate to get the Eagle out for his admission examination.Ash Shields, holding a Bald Eagle for the first time, is an asset to our field. Yes, that’s a halo above their head.Palpating the shoulders for injuries, swelling or anything that might explain the matter. It takes the three of us, – Ash, myself and those are Na’Mae Gray’s hands helping keep the Eagle still by holding his head and right wing.The Eagle is in pretty good shape overall.
Needing aviary time, however simple a treatment plan, still presented us with a problem. Our eagle aviary was lost in our move from Bayside to Manila and we haven’t yet rebuilt it. (want to help rebuild our raptor aviary? donate here!) Sure, with your help we’ve rebuilt a lot in the last 18 months, but we still have a lot more to do! And this bird didn’t have time to wait for the end of our hectic wild baby season – no doubt he had his own baby season he needed to get back to. His partner was now a single parent.
Fortunately, just a four-hour drive South, is Sonoma County Wildlife Rescue. Their executive director, Doris Duncan, and I have know each other for nearly twenty years. At SCWR they treat thousands of wild patients each year, as well as maintain impressive programs to promote co-existence with our wild neighbors for rural, agricultural, suburban and urban areas. I reached out to Doris and she readily agreed to help us with this Eagle. The next day Bird Ally X co-founder and chief photographer administrator and general utility player, Laura Corsiglia and Ash took the drive to Petaluma and SCWR to deliver one Bald Eagle in need of an aviary and some quality care.
On site at Sonoma County Wildlife Rescue.SCWR is a beautiful facility. HWCC is working hard to finish building our capacity in order to meet the needs of our patients.
Doris Duncan of SCWR is a fantastic resource for wildlife rehabilitation, and she’s an excellent advocate for our profession. With her organization, she has also supported our work here in Humboldt County helping us when we were building and expanding our capacity at the old Bayside site.
After about 4 weeks, she texted me that the Eagle was ready for release. It was thrilling news! We started to arrange a team (probably Laura and one of our staff) to drive down to Petaluma to get him!
I texted Doris that we were ready to travel, but she replied, “No need! Flying Tails will bring your Eagle home!”
And there we were, on the 7 of August, at the airport, waiting for the Eagle to land. Our release site would be a field very close to the capture site, not 300 yards away, which happened to be at the home of one our board members, Lisken Rossi, as well as her parents (and HWCC supporters), Gail and Tony.
(l-r) Laura, Ash, Na’mae, waiting for our ship to come in at the airport with a very long name, in one of the very few pictures not taken by Laura.Lou, of Flying Tails (foreground) and the pilot Eric bring the Bald Eagle out from the hangar where they’ve left the lovely little Beechcraft.Cindi Choate and Na’mae leave restricted areas in pursuit of the Eagle’s return to freedomThe ground crew meets the air crew!At the release site, Ash and Na’mae carry the crate to the field of the Eagle’s dreams.Na’Mae waits for the Eagle to emerge!And suddenly he decides to fly!The Eagle left the crate and flew out of the field and about 60 feet up into a nearby Redwood, where he reclaimed his mastery of all he surveyed!Happy staff! Alondra Cardena, Ash and Na’Mae enjoy the successful release!Alondra shares her video of the Eagle leaving the crate with Ash and Na’Mae – and they make a fine staff group photo at the same time! Below is the video Alondra shot.
This Bald Eagle’s rescue was very much a group effort. The concerned callers who originally found the injured Eagle, HWCC/bax, Sonoma County Wildlife Rescue and Ken Wayne’s Flying Tails all worked together to give this beloved member of the Humboldt Bay community a second chance.
Of course, we are very committed to being able to provide quality care here in our region for all the wild patients we serve, so that means we need your help continuing to rebuild our capacity after our swiftly done relocation last year. So far, with your help we’ve been able to make great strides in building back our capacity and expanding it over what we had lost! Our new yard for orphaned fawns is a perfect example of our improved facility, made possible with your support. Our new waterfowl aviary is as well. A raptor aviary is next on the list. With your help we’ll soon get it done! Thank you for making our work possible!
It’s been a very busy wild baby season, even as we continue to rebuild our facility a year after moving to Manila. Your help is critical to our success. Please donate!
Your donation supports everything we do! From rescue of injured and orphaned wildlife, to keeping wild families together, to developing and training the next generation of wildlife care providers. So far 2024 is one of our most demanding years of our history with nearly a thousand patients already treated since January. There is so much more to do and we need your help to make it all happen.
Since 1979, HWCC has tried to provide excellent care for our region’s orphaned Mule Deer fawns. This year, thanks to your support and our volunteers’ efforts, including an incredibel work day put in by local members of the US Coast Guard! Watch the video for our report on our progress!
We have more to go, more to build to regain our lost capacity after last year’s move. Your support will make it all happen. Please help us help our wild neighbors!! Thank you!!!
Season’s Greetings! It’s hard to believe we’ve made it another year! After moving all of our operations to our undeveloped new property in March, the challenges were looming. The prospect of treating the 800 or so wild babies we admit each year in a completely unprepared facility was daunting. With your support however, we quickly got a workable pool for seabird orphans, an aviary for songbirds, other outdoor housing that we made work for everyone from Mallard ducklings to Pelicans and even a Gray Squirrel!
In the end, it was a season full of joys and successes! We treated and released dozens of baby Swallows – Barn Swallows, Cliff Swallows and Violet-Green Swallows – and we treated nearly 200 orphaned Opossum babies! 13 Raccoons! Over a dozen Striped Skunk kits and over a dozen Mallard ducklings too! We brought safe and humane resolutions to dozens of human-wildlife conflicts, keeping wild families together and protecting people’s homes! We even managed to take in the deer fawns from the Redding/Shasta area when the facility there became unavailable.
Ahead, in the Winter months, we’ll rebuild more of our capacity. We have support from the Oiled Wildlife Care Network to build three large seabird pools, we’ll soon finish the raccoon housing we started this Summer – an aviary for ducks, geese and herons will be started soon… Funding issues are forever – we’ll ask for your help again and again. Our community’s support has been awesome. Without you 2023 would’ve been a disaster! Instead it was the first year in our bold new era of independence and sustainability! Thank you!
As we enter the Winter months, with a to-do list that is exciting and challenging, we’ll continue to build a wildlife care facility that is as good as our Wild Neighbors deserve. I hope that 2024 brings all of us, near and far, the peace and prosperity that will help get the hard work done. Thank you for your support across the year, and the ages.
You make it all possible! May you have a joyful Holiday Season and a Happy New Year!
With deep gratitude Monte Merrick, director HWCC/bax
Wild Baby Season of 2023 is nearly halfway through as we continue to build our vessel as we sail it. We need your help! Help us feed 10 Fawns, 15 Swallows, 3 Owls, 10 Mallards, 5 Skunks, 10 Raccoons, a Gray Fox and more! Please support our work if you can!
A small bird with a big belly, covered in short blue-gray feathers with hardly a tail to speak of, a pair of big eyes and an impressive pinkish mouth, with a really splendid gravelly voice – this young Steller’s Jay (Cyanocitta stelleri) was found alone on the ground in an alley in Eureka and picked up by a kind member of the public.
Upon examination at our clinic, the little Jay was found to be in good health with no injuries. The only thing we were concerned about was the welfare of the family. The rescuer had wondered if the parents had been killed. The best thing to do would be to return to the site and look for the baby’s family, and if possible, attempt to reunite them with their parents. If no parents were found, the baby would come back to HWCC to be raised as an orphan until they could take care of themselves in the wild.
Like most parents, Steller’s Jays don’t abandon their babies. But tragedy can occur in a world full of cars, cats, windows, and natural predators – we treat nearly 200 orphaned songbirds each year!
We followed the address deep into Eureka, armed with binoculars and carrying the baby in a box lined with a soft pillowcase. We arrived at the site and proceeded to watch for Jays.
An encouraging sign! An adult Steller’s Jay flew over the neighborhood!
We watched and listened following the clues to a Camellia tree. High inside its canopy which we detected a well built nest.
We placed the baby on a branch inside the Camellia, as high as we could reach. The baby quickly fluttered down and hopped around on the ground – a classic fledgling move. So, the baby won’t be contained by the nest ever again, but is still dependent on their parents. It’s a vulnerable time in a young bird’s life. These first steps of independence wreak havoc on us all!
If we can determine that the baby and parents are aware of each other and in communication, the family will be considered reunited. We stand back to observe, keeping a close eye on the baby.
A parent suddenly appears, perching a distance above. They glare at us. We move further back.
The parent approached the baby and we could hear them calling to each other.
Several times the parent came to the baby, then flew away to forage and return with food. Keeping watch over babies, hunting for them, guiding them on how to live as a member of one’s own species and eventually fly free on their own – thanks Mom. (or Dad. or Parent. Steller’s Jays pairs look the same and do the same work. Of course one does lay the eggs. After that though it’s equal cooperation. So here’s to you, avian parents!)
It’s awesome that this Jay’s mother and father were still present and that the youngster could return to their family. Of course, many young birds are actually orphaned and do need our care. While you can read on the internet that intervention may be the wrong thing, and that if you don’t know, you shouldn’t act, we can easily turn this reasoning around. In many cases we might not know enough to not act. To decide to do nothing might have consigned this wild animal to a needless death. The kind-hearted people who brought us the baby Jay were not able to tell that the baby wasn’t alone. They observed for a considerable time but didn’t see anything to allay their fears. This is perfectly fine! They aren’t professionals. They did the right thing. They called our clinic and told us what they’d seen. WIth no parents observed and the bird in the middle of an alley, with possible injuries, we suggested that they bring the baby to us. In this way we all played our part in helping protect this bird and gave them a second chance.
Want to help us provide the kind of care and attention that all wild neighbors in need deserve? Please consider donating! Your generosity is what makes our work possible. Without you there would be no one to call, no one to intervene, and no one to make sure that fledglings who’ve wandered far from home will get the attention and care they deserve. Thank you!!!
A video of a recent day at our new facility in Manila!
You can help us stay afloat!! Please donate to help us rebuild, and most importantly, care for the hundreds of wild orphans that are coming our way no matter what! WE NEED YOUR SUPPORT!
With your generous support, we’ve achieved our first goal of raising the money for our downpayment and closing costs! Now we move on to permitting and then making the move! Your help is still needed of course, but we are deeply grateful and kind of blown away by the support you’ve given! Thank you!!!
Thank you so much for helping us help wildlife! and if you’d like to support our work and our move to be secure and sustainable please donate here!
