A Summer Like No Other!

Every summer at HWCC/bax is a hectic and frantic season of orphaned wild babies by the scores, long days, great sorrows and thrilling joys. We prepare for wild baby season each year as best we can, with regular trainings for experienced staff and new volunteers alike, marshalling resources, stocking up, and generally getting ready for five to six months of an intense workload.

This summer, 2023, of course is complicated by our recent relocation from Bayside to Manila. We took possession of our new location in early March and it was early April before we could begin the process of transforming our new building into a functional clinic. By early May we already had orphaned babies in care and by early June we were deep in the season.

We built some of our crucial new patient housing before the season really hit – we’ve got a songbird aviary, a fawn yard, housing for small mammals like opossums, and housing that we’d intended for chipmunks and squirrels but which has been dedicated to orphaned Mallards since the middle of May.

Since moving our operations to Manila we’ve admitted over 750 wild patients! I’ve said it more than once that we’re building the ship while we sail it, and it might seem impossible, but believe me, when Necessity is your only boss and a supportive community is your greatest ally, it’s astonishing what you can do.

Our new facility in April of 2023 – lots to do to get ready for baby season!
The same space in May!
In the middle of our relocation we were taking care of a few hundred orphaned wild babies, such as these six Striped Skunks whose den was demolished and their mother lost.
In May we started building this patient housing for small mammals!
Still more to do on it, but we can use it as it is. Dozens of Opossum babies have grown up in here already!
We havent replaced or rebuilt our large seabird pools, but we do have our warm water therapy pool and one small saltwater pool available for seabirds. OVer 20 birds have been treated in it so far, including a Common Murre baby and two Rhinceros Auklets currently in care!
Our fawn yard will expand soon, but already it’s the best we’ve ever had!
Many songbirds have recovered in this aviary. We also raised 17 swallows, Barn, Cliff and Violet-green, in this aviary this Summer! Now a Steller’s Jay who will be released very soon is using it. Next patients may be more Barn Swallows!
Intended for very small mammalslike Chipmunks and Squirrels, this housing has been a nursery to two dozen Mallard babies! We still have 5 in care.

There’s a lot more housing needed, such as a raptor aviary, more songbird aviaries, a pelican aviary, a proper aviary for ducks, geese and herons, more mammal housing – and for all of this we need time and materials – and that means your support!

Every year at this time we run low on resources – time is tight, patient needs are high, and spending a lot of time getting the word out and raising funds is difficult to accomplish! But the simple fact is we need you badly. In order to keep going through our busy Summer, feed our patients, pay our small staff, keep the electricity on, pay our mortgage, and so on, we need to raise several thousand dollars! We can’t print money, but with your help, that won’t be necessary! Please donate if you can! Our wild patients now and in the future need you!

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Happy Mother’s Jay!

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!!!

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Rare Opportunity (and the only option we have to continue our work)

Reverend Gary Davis is right, we do have to move. It’s been 18 months since HWCC decided that we had to move our facility. Our current lease ends at the end of this year. It took us until this Summer to locate a property that we can afford and make work. By afford, I mean, that its sale price to us is a very good deal and significantly less than any other property we’ve considered. I do not mean that we have the money. We don’t.

But this property is a rare opportunity and I do believe that we will be able to secure some kind of financing – both the property and Humboldt Wildlife Care Center are good bets.

But the costs of moving is going to come from people we ask to help. There is no other way. The amount we need to raise by the end of this year in order to complete this transition – in essence a transformation – is more than any goal we’ve ever set, by far. I don’t see another path forward.

We simply need to raise this money – it’s hard for me announce this goal, so apprehensive I am, but what else is there to be done? A downpayment, the cost of getting enough infrastructure up and running at our new facility – including all the administrative tasks – so that our work continues without interruption, while we dismantle and clear the facility we currently occupy – money and volunteer labor will be the only thngs that get us through.

So here we go! If you are reading this, you may be a person we need. We may need your physical help, we made need your financial backing, we may need your expertise. We definitely need you to root hard for us.

In every wildlife project I’ve worked on before Bird Ally X merged with HWCC, there were people who worked all day on the logistics, the paperwork, the fundraising and the budgeting. I was a wildlife rehabilitator – I specialized in oil spill response, seabird wrecks, orphan-rearing, care, innovating patient housing, and training volunteers – other highly skilled people did the work to make sure I had the tools and resources needed to do all of those things. Their contribution to those efforts is so terrific – I’ve known that forever, but when I came to HWCC, it wasn’t long before I needed to learn to do that job too.

So, yes, in fact it is frightening to embark on a project this big, this critical, this necessary and with such high stakes that failure is, as they say, not an option. Especially when it’s just some punk from New Jersey who wound up on the west coast leading the way. So I thought some background was in order.

I want to tell you the origins of Bird Ally X, how our mission led us to HWCC, and tell you what I see on the other side of this transformation – I want to tell you what we are building together and show you some of the foundation of that vision.

However, if you already know you support our work and don’t need to read about BAX history from my perspective, maybe you would like to me cut to the chase, tell you that our goal is $150,000 (which is roughly the amount of one year in our budget!) and donate now.

For the rest of you who would like to know more about BAX’ beginnings and how we got here, and where we’re headed, well read on….

Bird Ally X – who we are and how we got this way

Since this website’s first incarnation at blogspot.com in 2009, the voice speaking to you from this platform has mostly been mine. Making the website was a gamble. Only Laura Corsiglia, my beloved and co-inventer of the idea of Bird Ally X knew about it – BAX was an idea whose time was about to come but hadn’t quite.

But it did come. On September 22, 2009, Bird Ally X was founded as a collective by six of us. Shannon RIggs, DVM (currently the Director of Anaimal Care at Pacific Wildlife Care in Morro Bay), Vann Masvidal (currently the Center Director also at PWC in Morro Bay) January Bill and Marie Travers (both currently leading our Botulism Response Program in the Lower Klamath Wildlife Refuge), and Laura (currently BAX art director as well as a logistical support for HWCC, and chief photographer and also my beloved) and me. Our first task: to develop a workshop that we could take to conferences that gave people a place to start learning how to effectively rehabilitate aquatic birds.

Athough we each had a lot of experience rehabilitating wildlife in general, oil spill response had given us each a strong specailization in aquatic bird rehabilitation, with deeper specialization among us – for example, Shannon is a gifted surgeon, Laura has a genius eye, Vann is extremely sensitive, Marie has perserverance and mad skills, January is methodical and precise and deeply committed to excellence. I don’t mean these people have common traits that you might identify among your friends, not unless your friends happen to be super heroes, which is what my five co-founders all have in common. Let’s face it, I met them in the middle of an oil spill response where we were all far from home, working 16 hour days amid hundreds of suffering wild birds, doing what we could to keep them alive and help them recover. I was amazed by them. Truly super heroes. And when we founded Bird Ally X, we thought it would be great to help other super heroes learn how to effectively rehabilitate aquatic bIrds too.

Making this workshop led to an expanded mission: to publish instructional materials for wildlife rehabilitators everywhere. Many rehabilitators work at a very small scale, usually in their own homes or in their own backyards. who are remote yet still deserve to learn the most current techniques of our field, also to help small facilities at times when they face an influx of patients that overwhelm them or are unfamiliar – most rehabilitators don’t get frequent chances to learn how to handle a sudden seabird mortality event, and need help if it happens in their area, as an example.

In the end, our mission statement included providing direct care to wild animals in need, providing educational materials and opportunities to wildlife rehabilitators and the general public, and also, and no less important, to advocate for our patients, not as stewards but as allies in the ongoing and undeniable war on nature and the wild, of which we are also a product, recognizing where our side truly is, just as Allied forces fought their war against fascist destruction.

All of this was, you could say, a tall order.

After the workshop was complete and had been delviered a few times, we wrote a book, An Introduction to Aquatic Bird Rehabilitation. You can buy it here. We’ve sold several hundred, maybe a thousand. We keep the price low. The last few printings have been done beautifully at the local and fantastic Bug Press.

The book came out of that first workshop that we put together, called by the same name. Our first version of the book was a ‘zine styled handout, about 50 pages long, and offered with our workshop. The second iteration was still a free handout, but had grown to over a hundred pages. At last in 2012, we published the book in its current form, 150 pages and available for $38USD. Now, ten years later, we are planning its first revisions.

In 2011, a year after receiving our 501(c)3, most of the six co-founders had been scattered by life’s circumstances (work, family, the usual) to different parts of the state and country. For example, Laura and I spent the last 6 months of 2010 in MIchigan responding to the massive spill of Alberta tar sands oil into the Kalamazoo River from a ruptured Enbridge pipeline, where we provided care for hundreds of birds and thousands of aquatic turtles. (At points during that response, I was responsible for the entire wildlife response! eek! talk about sleepless nights!)

Come August of 2011, with three of us (Laura, myself and January) in Humboldt County for various reasons not related to BAX, a small disaster that had been unfolding for months, if not years, came to our attention. Juvenile Brown Pelicans were being seen at fish cleaning stations at public boat launches and docks, completely soaked and suffering because of it.

Fish waste, greasy and non-soluble, poses a significant problem for aquatic birds the world over. THe impact of fish waste on feathers is the same as the imapct of petroleum products – that is, it completely disrupts the waterproofing that a bird’s feathers provide by disrupting the arrangement of feathers and allowing water to penetrate to the body. Like most birds, an aquatic bird’s temperature runs from about 39˚to 41˚C (102-106˚F) and being waterproof is what allows them to thrive on water that may only be 10˚C (50˚F). If the water gets through to their skin it’s not unlike a diver who suddenly finds they have a hole in thier drysuit. If they don’t leave the water they will soon succumb to hypothermia. For our unfortunate human diver, simply pulling them back to the boat and giving them hot tea may suffice, but for an aquatic bird, leaving water means leaving home – where the food is , where the water is, where life is… stranded they will soon die.

Read more about fish waste and our responses in 2011 and 2012

After a couple days of reconnaisance, we found wet, struggling fish waste contaminated juvenile Brown Pelicans from Crescent CIty to Shelter Cove, a span of nearly 200 miles. We captured close to ten immediately, and over the next month in 2011 rescued and treated more than 50 individuals.

In 2012, the situation was not necessarily worse, but we learned about it sooner, in early July and began our response then. We ended up treated over 250 birds that year, mostly Pelicans, but also about a dozen gulls of different species, but mostly Heermann’s Gulls, who are closely associated with Brown Pelicans.

The 2011 response began our relationship with HWCC, at the time a very small clinic treating far less than a thousand patients each year, with one staff person and no business hours, only a hotline. We worked with HWCC to develop thier facility into a true hospital and rasied funds so that our project of caring for the impacted Pelicans did not disrupt their meager finances (our finances are STILL meager!)

Developing HWCC’s infrastructure did create another challenge. There was no one on the staff who could operate what we’d built. Pools are a complex tool to us in treating wildlife, and the inexperiences care giver is at a marked disadvantage. without a good working knowledge of a pool’s usse and maintenance, they become a danger to the patient, not a benefit. HWCC asked BAX staff to stay on as managers of their facility in the winter of 2011/12 and we did.

As I mentioned above, 2012 saw a much larger fish waste crisis with 5 times the patients of 2011. A response of this magnitude required help from out of our region. Staff from the Oiled Wildlife Care Network (OWCN), staff from the Calfornia Department of Fish and WIldlife (CDFW) and rehabilitators from around the state came to Humboldt to lend a hand.

Besides for developing our facility to handle this level of response, we had to develop our core group of volunteers. During this time we realized that we had an incredible opportunity to build not only a facility that could provide high quality care, but, given our proximity to Cal Poly Humboldt, one of the premier wildlife studies universities in the West, a hospital that could also train current and future wildlife care providers.

A teaching hospital is something you can start right away while you spend a lifetime making it better, and we did start right away. Over the last ten years our internship program has helped nearly 75 young people, mostly students at Cal Poly, advance their skills and ready them for employment in the field of wildlife care. The five current members of our staff are graduates of the program! As we move into the future, a major goal is to further exapnd the eduactional opportunites ofr our volunteers, interns and staff, and help contribute to a cultiure of excellence in our field. A sturdy and sustainable foundation will always be a crucial ingredient for success, and this is where support from the community plays a huge role, making our goals achievable.

The goal of converting Humboldt Wildlife Care Center into a teaching hospital led us to merging with HWCC in 2013, -a move that was completed in 2014. In 2014 HWCC merged with BAX. Taking complete responsibility for this facility has allowed us to use it, not only asa hospital that treats 1500 patients each year, providing second chances to innocent wild animals caught in the myriad snares of human infrastructure, but also a laboratory to develop techniques and strategies that can be used by wildlife rehabilitators anywhere who suffer from the very typical scenario of being terribly overworked while being shockingly underfunded. (Take our budget as an example, last year we took in about $150,000 and treated 1,612 patients. That amounts to $93 per patient. Now that’s not the whole story, many of those patients were very long term, like an orphaned raccoon who requires 4 months of care, compared to Fox Sparrow who hit a window and is ready for release in 24 hours – obviously patient needs can differ extremely – but still, we maintain a staff and facility on very little money – our excellence is found in resilience, innovation, sacrifice and a willingness to use what’s available to achieve the impossible!)

Still, the simple truth is that we have been able to develop much needed training materials and workshops becuaes we’ve had the opportunity to use real world development (something we might call trail and error) – this opportunity is golden, and we want to continue in this vein for as long as wildlife rehabilitation is a needed service.

The Pelican fish waste response also led us into a much more active role as advocates for our patients, including protecting our wild neighbors from becoming patients. In fact I was the inaugural chair of the Advocacy committee for the California Council for Wildlife Rehabilitators, a professional organization of rehabilitators in our state that hosts an annual Symposium and supports the improvement of available care.

It became quite obvious that those of us on the frontlines of the war between society and nature had an important perspective and important specific knowledge that could help policy makers make decisions and take actions that were inaccordance with the critical needs of wild animals. Some policies are easy to enact, like putting on lid on the fishwaste bins so that juvenile Pelicans can’t forage in them, while other solutions require changing hearts and minds, like banning cruel traps, stopping abominations like bear hounding and killing contests and promoting use of nonlethal measures instead of senseless slaughter to protect property from damages caused by wild animals.

Advocacy work can be problematic. Political divisions are readily apparent when you attend a public meeting. Advocating for wild animals automatically puts on one side of the aisle and on the other side are the agricultural and “hook and bullet” lobbyists, as they are often called. Well, ranchers and farmers, hunters and anglers, are real people, not lobbyists, and they help to make up our community. Ranchers, farmers hunters and anglers may encounter a wild animal in need and require our help – ranching, farming, hunting and fishing don’t automatically preclude compassion. So we must be careful not to alienate those who may need our help. It’s a line that we walk everyday if we are being true to our mission in all of its implications and ramifications. And in fact, learning to walk this line is fitting and proper – we are here to serve all of our community when they need us. Being able to persuade an angler to help us stop fish waste pollution is critical! We need more allies, not more enemies. Learning to walk this line is the right thing to do. And we have no other choice; our responsibility to our patients and the wildlife we serve demand it.

To that end, we intitiated our “humane solutions” program, in which we help people solve any conflict they might have with a wild animal in a manner that is respectful of the rights and needs of the animal, and effectively protects the property and safety of the people involved. With this program we have intervened in thousands of conflicts over the last eleven years, keeping wild families together, and preserving hundreds, if not thousands, of wild lives.

The big stories, of course, from the last 11 years, are our patients. As I write this, Wednesday, September 28th at 5pm our database says that we’ve admitted 13,544 wild animals since January 2012. That’s 13,544 wild animals in need. Suffering animals who would’ve had nowhere to turn, no-one to relieve their suffering if it weren’t for you and your support of our work.

And while I’m not the leader of our botulism project in the Lower Klamath, two of our six co-founders are. You can read all about their work caring for botulism-infected shorebirds and waterfowl during the last four years.

The immediate future and what comes next.

Our intention for the future is to continue what we’ve been doing, and to always seek improvement. Right now, this is easier said than done, but in fact it always is.

I dream of an internship program that can house and pay our interns, even if it’s only a small stipend. There is nothing that being able to afford working without compensation qualifies a person for, and many potentially gifted caregivers cuold be denied opportunity because they don’t have the resources to sustain working without pay. I’d like to change that and widen the reach we have by deepening the pool we draw from.

Right now, in California Black Bear cub and Mountain Lion kitten rehabilitation is done only by a few organizations, (if at all in the case of Mountain Lion kittens). Every Black Bear cub admitted from Humboldt, Trinity, Del Norte, Sikiyou, Shasta, or Mendocino Counties is sent to Sacramento and then to Lake Tahoe for rehabilitation, but often into permanent captivity. I would like to change this, and establish a legitmate bear cub rehabilitation program here so that the region’s bears can be treated and released at home. This is a long term goal, but one we never lose sight of …

A fully functional medical clinic, with the capacity to make radiographs and a veterinarian on staff are developments that we must pursue. Volunteer veterinarians, and long distance consulting with wildlife specific veterinarians gets the job done, but better is needed, even if for the benefit of our staff. I’ve had the privilege of working with some very gifted wildlife vets at the various places I’ve been on staff over the last 23 years and I want to ensure that the staff of HWCC has the same benefit.

Expanded service and an increase in our preventative programs are in the works, from education programs at all levels (schoolchildren, governing boards) to practical efforts like beach patrols, increased capacity for interventions in conflicts, and late night availability for emergency response. We know these are things we can build, given the time and materials.

In short, we must always expand our capacity and raise our standards. A capacity reduced, a standard lowered are poisonous. Our mission, our patients, our vocation all demand excellence. We strive to meet that demand.

I do wish we had more time to make this critical move. But that’s never been possible, and ensuing circumstances didn’t help, such as my health problems that took up a significant part of last year. All that we’ve built does feel jeopardized right now – and what we’ve built has signifcant value – losing it would be catastrophic – so we must preserve it, and we must do so in a way that allows us to continue to build on what we’ve accomplished.

That’s what makes this property in Manila a “rare opportunity.” Let me count the ways.

  1. It exists. We’ve been looking for suitable property that we can envision purchasing, meaning, that we can even entertain the idea of raising the funds. Many incredible properties are available for those with the resources to buy them. This property in Manila is offered to us because we know the owner, who understands how we will use it, and has generously lowered the price.
  2. Maybe we can afford it.
  3. Location: like our current location in Bayside, Manila is well situated in Humboldt County to make it it accessible for the many communities North and South. Staying between Eureka and Arcata seems important. We routinely make trips to Crescent City and Garberville. Arcata Bay is a good spot for us.
  4. Size: although I had dreamed of something larger, in truth we’ll be increasing the space we have available by at least four times. This will improve what we can set up for our patients. Yes, it may be the only option we have, but it’s also a good option to have.


The wild animals of Northern California and beyond need us to thrive, and to do so we must survive. If we fail to acquire this property we will have nowhere to go when our lease ends at the end of this year. Even acquiring that property tomorrow means we have only three months to get it ready for us to use it (certainly not to bring it to it’s full capacity, that may take a couple years) at the same time that we must dismantle our current facility and clear it from the land.

We need your help. Wildlife of our enormous and beautiful and necessary region in need, need you. Please help. Donate to our move and future.










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A Summer Full of Wild Babies and an Urgent Need!

A Coyote pup found near Tule Lake in the middle if a routine exam during her care at HWCC

What a Summer, what a year, what an era!!!! As of today, the 21st of August, Humboldt Wildlife Care Center has treated a thousand wild patients in 2022. Our humane solutions work has kept scores of wild families together. Among the thousand patients, our small facility in Bayside ( right now we only have a quarter-acre!) has provided care for 7 Barn Owl babies, 2 Coyote pups (one from Tule Lake, the other from Round Valley) dozens of Barn Swallows, Cliff Swallows, Violet-green Swallows, House finches, White-crowned Sparrows, and Band-tailed Pigeons. Many Mallards, Raccoon babies and a Ring-tailed cat we’ve had in care sicne she was an infant are still in care today, but soon to be released.

Now, as our caseload lightens up a little (we’re down to 50 patients from 100 two weeks ago currently in treatment) and we’re finally able to breathe a little, we have to focus on the biggest challenge we’ve ever faced – moving our hospital to a new location without interrupting the care we must provide our wild neighbors… I’m certain we’ll make it, but to be completely honest the stress of making sure we do is constant, and tiring. Already understaffed and overworked, it will require a huge amount of community support for us to make this happen. We need you badly right now.

I’ll be asking for contributions nonstop until we’ve made this transition – I hope you understand why!

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A clutch of five House Finches, who we cared for from the time they were featherless hatchlings, in our aviary being fed. Soon they were completely self-feeding and wanted nothing to do with us. All five were successfully raised and released in July!
Feeding these young House Finches is a sweet privilege in a day of long exhausting hours.
A very young Ring-tailed Cat, a cousin of the Raccoon, was brought to us in early July. She is doing very well and will be released soon back to freedom in her home range.
We’ve admitted several Gray Fox kits this year. Four have already been released and one is due to be free very soon!
A young fawn in bad shape: Northern California hasa lot of deer but very few fawn rehabilitators. This young Mule Deer came from Siskiyou county for care because we were closest.
Five Mule Deer fawns currently in care. Soon they will be weaned and ready for release. We have a very hands off approach when it comes to fawns – they need all of their wits to make it in the rugged Coastal Range – their wildness is the greatest asset and we work hard to respect and protect it. This photo take through a special hidden observation opening but there is no sneaking up on these guys!
A Western Gray Squirrel, admitted as an infant at the end of April was in care for a month before he was old enough to be released. Staff rehabilitator and BAX board member Nora Chatmon feeds him a milk replacer in the weeks before he was weaned.
One of our awesome Summer interns, Julia Bautista, administers a special vitamin/mineral supplement to a young Barn Swallow.
This Rubber Boa, a locally common if rarely seen snake, was caught by a cat in Southern Humboldt. After a week of antibiotics, the snake was ready for relase. Outdoor, free roaming cats cause a lot of pain and suffering to our wild neighbors.

As our Summer begins to wind down, and the effort to move looms in the near future, we are in a serious situation. We need your support now.

Every day someone tells us how much they appreciate that we are here. I understand that completely. I appreciate that we are here too! If we weren’t there would be nowhere for wild neighbors to be treated and released – no place to end the suffering of those too wounded to ever be free again, and no place to peacefully resolve human wildlife conflicts in a manner that all parties are satisfied and wild families are kept intact. The service that any wildlife hospital provides its community is pretty far below the radar, but when the need becomes apparent, when someone finds a wild neighbor injured or orphaned by the ordinary everyday operations of our human-built world, it is critical that a facility be there to provide the necessary care. HWCC has been operating in Humboldt County since 1979. I intend that it be here, providing ever better care for innocent wild animals far into the future, far beyond my own lifespan. Your support is the only thing that will make sure that we continue to be here for our wild neighbors now and forever and right now, we need you badly. Please help.

all photos Laura Corsiglia/bax

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Want to help us help our wild neighbors in need?

You can help return an orphaned or injured wild animal to the wild! You can help keep wild families together! You can help keep our facility functional and clean! Volunteers are needed for all tasks. After putting our volunteer program on hold in March of 2020, we’ve been slowly rebuilding it, adding volunteers to our shifts as the pandemic has allowed, and now we are ready to add more.

Volunteers are a crucial element in the field of wildlife rehabilitation. All wildlife rehab facilitities operate on shoestring budgets and without the necessary help from volunteers, we’d never last. The pandemic has been brutal on staff and we are very happy to rebuild our core team of volunteers.

The life of a volunteer: One day you’re helping with an opossum, the next day a Bald Eagle.

Some of the tasks that volunteers help with:

1. Cleaning: First and foremost, from the newest, most inexperienced volunteer to the director of our facility, a major task for all of us is cleaning. Laundry, dishes, sweeping, mopping, sanitizing – these are mission critical in a hospital setting and your experience in your own life will serve here! If you’re new to this kind of maintenance, we can help you and you dont have to get a job in the food service industry to learn it (as many of us did, like me!). We also have to clean the patient housing, which means that you will be trained in how to work around a frightened wild animal, without making the stress much worse.

2. Feeding: Patient food must be prepared at least twice a day. Want to learn what it takes to emulate a diet that a wild diet in the setting of temporary captive care? It’s a great skill to have and it won’t be long before you’lll understand the intricacies, and the principles that support them, of feeding a wild animal a nutritional diet that is familiar and therefore stress reductive.

3. Examinations: Helping staff perform routine examinations of our patients. In order to perform an assessment of the condition of our patients, routine exams are given. Volunteers learn valuable handling skills that protect the caregiver and the patient from harm. Instructions, safety protocols, and personal protective equipment are provided as needed.

4. Transportation: If you can drive from Oregon to Laytonville and sometimes beyond, then you can help us with transportation for patients. The region we serve is huge and we have to travel as many 3 hours away to pick up orphaned and injured wild neighbors. Simply driving all day can be a very big help to an animal who desperately needs a second chance.

5. Rescue: Many times people report an animal in trouble, but they are unable to do anything about it. They call us. We go out on missions to rescue wild animals every day. Even as a new volunteer you can still participate simply by driving. Capturing wild animals in need is a skill, but you will be provided with the training and the safety equipment to be a hero!

6. Releases: Returning an animal to their birthright of wild freedom is a joy beyond compare. Transporting animals to their release site and helping to ensure their safe return to the life that they were born to is one of the regular bits of supreme awesome-osity that can be yours simply by being here helping!

7. Answering the phone: Helping people resolve conflicts with wild animals is an important part of our daily work. Keeping wild families together – in other words preventing wild babies from becoming orphans is a serious task, can be difficult, and largely happens on the phone in conversation with someone who may be at their wit’s end. Learn to advocate for wild animals in an effective manner by answering the phone in our clinic. It can be challenging, but that just makes our successes sweeter!

8. Humane Solutions! Sometimes keeping wild families together requires an intervention. In order to stop a trapper or some other cruel plan to get rid of an unwated wild animal, we go to the scene and work with the people to keep the wild family safe while conving them that it would be ebst if they moved on. This is delicate work that can also take us on an adventure through people’s crawlspaces and attics. Not for everyone, but if it’s for you, you’ll learn valuable skills in humanely solving people’s conflicts with a wild animal.

9. Ambassador: You can be a voice for the rights of Mother Earth and the Wild. Education and outreach are very important parts of our mission. Do you enjoy speaking in public? Do you have a passion for environmental education? Do you want to make people act right toward wildlife? We may be the droids you’re looking for!

Releasing an animal who was going to die without our care is one the greatest joys known to humanity.

These are some of the most common and important ways that we rely on volunteers to meet the challenges of our mission. Just about every wildlife rehabilitator working today began as a volunteer, and many still are volunteers. Many wildlife rehabilitators with their own facilities at their own houses are still volunteers! This is not a well-paid field, unless you factor in the job satisfaction, and in that sense, it’s unparalleled.

But satisfaction isn’t all that you’ll get out of helping us help our wild neighbors. You will get critical training that can be used here or in a larger context. As a member of the Oiled Wildlife Care Network HWCC/bax is your local path toward being qualified to help care for impacted wildlife if there is ever a catastrophic oil spill locally or across the state. Believe me, the only way to make these kinds of disasters less painful is being able to help repair and restore what was broken. Your desire to help begins here!

So if you want to help us help wildlife in a direct hands-on manner, let us know! CLICK HERE TO APPLY

And if your dance card or your plate is already full, you can always help us meet our mission with your generous support. Donations make our world go ’round. Without your financial help, our doors would close forever. PLEASE DONATE HERE

Thank you for your love of the Wild. Love is the most important ingredient in the conservation and protection of our natural home and our wild kin!




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New Wild Review, s2e2: Humane Solutions part one…

Board of directors member and HWCC rehabilitator, Nora Chatmon (r) talks about human/wildlife conflict as Assistant Rehabilitation Manager, Lucinda Adamson (l) listens.

For the latest episode of New Wild Review, four-fifths of Humboldt Wildlife Care Center’s clinic staff got together in February to talk about our Humane Solutions program – a backstage unfiltered eavesdrop as we talk about our work, our frustrations and some of the misconceptions about our wild neighbors that work against peaceful co-existence…

Rehabilitator and Humane Solutions consultant Brooke Brown.
Nora Chatmon, Lucinda Adamson, Monte Merrick and Brooke Brown discuss our Humane Solutions program, in a backstage way…

The discussion took off, lasting much longer than expected. In this epsiode, part one of our staff roundtable discussion, featuring Lucinda Adamson, Nora Chatmon, and Brooke Brown, we cover many of the frustrations – next episode the meaning, the awe and the victories – coming soon, the second half, in S2E3…

We hope you enjoy this discussion and remember! – our successful work keeping wild families together comes from your support! Thank you!

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Orphaned Raccoons Live Stream with Brook(e)! PHOTOS!

Each year we provide care and educational opportunities to several orphaned Northern Raccoon babies (Procyon lotor) – anywhere from a dozen to three dozen of the young, highly inquisitive, intelligent, and iconic mammals, depending on how well our outreach protecting denning mothers works.

This year we had great success helping people peacefully co-exist with neighborhood raccoons or humanely evict raccoon families from raccoon dens in crawl spaces and attics. Because of this success, we’ve admitted less than 20 raccoon babies this year. (to read about our other years, and learn more about our raccoon program check out all of our stories tagged Northern Raccoon)

The following photos our from our first group of raccoons released this year, after four months in care, learning as much about the wild world as they can in care. In these photos, taken by Laura Corsiglia, one our staff, Brooke Brown, releases three raccoons, two sisters and a male who was housed with them. It’s always a joy to see these bright young minds when they are first released into the blaze of reality.

HWCC staffperson, Brooke Brown opens the crates, letting our young patients greet the wild with no barriers between them since they lost their mothers months ago as tiny babies.
Exploring the real Earth.
These two sisters stick together through thick and thin, brave, resolute and with boundless curiosity
The rocks, rivers and forests of our region are the birthright of our patients
A portrait of a highly sophisticated Earthling.
The two sisters cross the river and climb the opposite tangled bank into their private freedom…
The male soon follows them….
“It is interesting to contemplate a tangled bank, clothed with many plants of many kinds, with birds singing on the bushes, with various insects flitting about, and with worms crawling through the damp earth, and to reflect that these elaborately constructed forms, so different from each other, and dependent upon each other in so complex a manner, have all been produced by laws acting around us…”
    –Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species

Your support makes our work protecting the young of the wild possible. Please help us keep our doors open and our wild neighbors in need with the care they deserve. Thank you.

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A Wild Mother’s Day of Reunion.

It’s the time when this year’s wild babies are first showing their independence, climbing from nests, stepping out on a limb. But one false step, and that independence comes crashing down.

Inside the box, a young owl, a “brancher” who’s left the nest but isn’t ready to fly, waits to be returned to their family.

Late in the afternoon the day before Mother’s Day, such a misstep brought a very young Barred Owl (Strix varia) down to the ground in Sequoia Park. Someone walking among the tall Redwoods saw the young, fluffy bird and gave Humboldt Wildlife Care Center/bax a call. Clinic staff went to the scene, and found a young “brancher” (a term birders use to describe a young bird after they first leave the nest but before they can fly) who’d lost their footing. Staff decided to bring the owl into our clinic for a quick exam.

With no injuries and in good health, we made plans to return the owl to their family the next day.

HWCC assistant rehabilitation manager, Lucinda Adamson, scans the tall trees for signs of the young owl’s parents.

No matter the species, it is much better to return healthy wild babies and juveniles to their parents when possible. We do a pretty good job of providing care for owlets at HWCC/bax, but no one can provide care the way a parent can. Keeping wild families together is one of our primary goals during the busy wild baby seasons of Spring and Summer.

So with the young owl in a box, our wild reunion team went back to Sequoia Park to return them to their family.

The tree with the nest cavity was located and the owl was given a lift up to the rough bark where they could get a good grasp. The young owl immediately began to climb toward the only home they’ve ever known.
“You have to climb before you can fly.” – an old Owl proverb.
Twenty feet and climbing!
Focused on the ascent, a three week old Owl shows the world what free solo really looks like!
Everything happens under the parent’s watchful gaze.

Had this owlet fallen to the ground in a more wild setting than a city park in the center of town, most likely they would have managed getting themselves back into the tree and out of harm’s way. However in a highly used public park, the possibility for the wrong kind of human intervention was simply to great to do nothing.

Every juvenile or baby wild animal that we admit at HWCC/bax is analyzed for the potential for reunion with their family, or even fostering them to another family of the same species. It’s a big relief for all when we are able to successfully reunite wild families. For those who are truly orphans, about half of our patients each year, we have protocols and methods to help them reach true independence with their wildness intact.

You can help! In fact without your help, we’d dry up and blow away like one hit wonders from the 70s! Your support keeps us open, prepared, and available to help all of our wild neighbors when their proximity to civilization leads to trouble. Thank you for helping make sure that our mission is kept on track and our work is supported. Thank you for donating and thank you for your love of the wild.

DONATE HERE

photos: Laura Corsiglia/BAX

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One morning on the 101, two sibling Hawks cause more than a few to take notice.

It was an ordinary Wednesday morning at Humboldt Wildlife Care Center, including the ringing phone and the person calling who’d seen a hawk by the side of US101 in the “safety corridor” between Arcata and Eureka. That section of highway, from the Eucalyptus trees that are slated for destruction to the bridge over the Eureka slough is a favorite hunting place for Red-tailed Hawks (Buteo jamaicensis). We frequently gets calls from concerned commuters about hawks on the ground – in the median, or by the side of the road – who seem unable to fly.

Rarely is the hawk actually in trouble. After eating it can take a raptor a while to be ready to fly again. For some reason the passing traffic does not seem to threaten the birds as they recover from a large meal (not exactly asleep in front of a televised Thanksgiving Day football game, but similar.). However, just because it usually isn’t an emergency, and just because the hawk is almost always perfectly fine doesn’t mean we don’t take these calls seriously. We treat plenty of hawks and other birds each year who’ve been hit by cars, and until we investigate we can’t know what the situation is.

As we mounted a voyage of discovery to that area to see what was going on, the phone rang again – and again. And again. Within an hour we’d received close to 30 calls about the hawk!

Soon our team was back. They’d caught the hawk easily. She’d been standing very close to traffic on the side of the highway beneath the eucalyptus trees. A juvenile whose tail was far from being red, she had no injuries that we could find. We set her up with a safe place and some mice as a meal. Immediately, she ate them.

Meanwhile, the calls kept coming! Apparently another hawk was near the same location, but in the median and closer to the bridge.

Another staff member went to check the second reported hawk out, finding a healthy looking bird that did not seem to need assistance. However, the calls did not stop coming in and with rush hour approaching, concerns about people trying to stop to help the hawk in heavy traffic, as well as the hawk’s safety during that time prompted us to try and catch him as well. Using a lucky break in the traffic we were able to safely net the hawk and bring him to our clinic for evaluation. Our staff noticed that a large adult Red-tailed Hawk, quite likely mother to both of these youngsters, was perched on a light post nearby watching as our captures unfolded.

Neither hawk had any injuries. Both were in relatively good condition although mildly dehydrated. We gave supportive care (i.e., food and fluids) and housed them for the night. The next day we moved both siblings (by their sizes, we believe that one, the larger, is female and the other is male) to an outdoor aviary in order to evaluate their flight.

On Friday, both hawks were evaluated for release. Both were flying very well, but the male was still mildly dehydrated, moreover, he hadn’t eaten while in care. We released the female and gave the male another day to eat and also to get more fluid therapy. The next day, he’d eaten and his hydration was returned to normal, and he was also released.

We took them near to their capture site, in the Fay Slough Wildlife Area, a safe distance from the freeway and very likely close to where they’d been raised. In fact on the first release, the adult Red-tailed Hawk we’d seen watching these birds’ capture was present. The female juvenile was released in her view, and both birds ended up flying off together. The next day, when the male was released, he was joined by his sister as soon as he took flight into nearby trees.

The power, the grace and the single-minded devotion to raptorizing… she’s got it all!

Even with all those advantages, she’s still just a juvenile with a lot to learn. In captivity or by the side of the road, young hawks sometimes find themselves in very awkward situations.

One of the best moments in a rehabilitator’s day – opening the box!


The young female takes flight, not yet aware that her mother can see her.

Perched in nearby vegetation while her mother watches from a much higher perch behind her, our former patient surveys her re-gained freedom.

The daughter…
… and the mother, last seen flying off together…

Volunteer Katharine Major enjoys giving a wild hawk her second chance.

Alone in our aviary for a day, the male ate well.

An additional day in care was all the brother needed before he could be released. Dehydration, even mild, is serious enough to address and well within the scope of what we can immediately do for our patients. Caution rules the day!

A minute on the ground to get his bearings… it’s not unusual for a young patient to need a moment out of the box to see which way the wind blows… see if there’s any food in the field and woods rat burrows.

And then he goes! Birds flying away is a favorite thing of ours…

Our ex-patient flies to the trees where his sister is waiting.

The siblings, free and together again, in the wild.
Happy interns Brooke Brown (left) and Tabytha Sheeley enjoy the fruits of their labors!

Intent, strength, and nearby parent – this young aerial ballerina (and her brother) has everything she needs – including this second chance – for a live well lived on the shores of Humboldt Bay.


While these hawks weren’t injured they were in a very dangerous location. Their reluctance to fly away on their own was causing all kinds of commotion with our human neighbors. It was prudent to catch these birds to make sure that all was well with them, as well as making sure that no one was harmed trying rescue them themselves. These two sibling hawks illustrate that we serve our wild neighbors first, but we also serve our human neighbors as well. Your support makes our mission possible!

As we near the end of this very challenging year, with so many demands on our attention and resources, we are forced to ask over and over again for your financial help. Keeping our clinic open to the myriad phone calls and emergencies isn’t easy and with out you it would even be a possibility. On this day, when we celebrate with gratitude our lives, our loves, our families and our shared world, please keep in mind the wild – without which none of anything would even exist.

all photos: Bird Ally X/ Laura Corsiglia

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Mule Deer Fawns Released! (Pictures!!)

Fawn calls are the most difficult. When a compassionate person stumbles across a fawn bedded down near a road, or near a construction site, or some other hazard created by people, and with no doe in sight, it can be very hard to think they should just leave the fawn alone. If they call us, we can usually discover through questions and conversation the situation and determine if the fawn needs care. Convincing a concerned person to put a fawn back in what clearly looks like an unprotected location can be challenging, even though in many cases that is exactly what the fawn and the fawn’s mother need. Often however, there is no way to put the fawn back. The caller got the fawn from someone who got the fawn from someone, or a dog dragged the fawn to the porch and no one knows from where, or the person has had the fawn at their house for many days and now the mother is no longer nearby – in these situations, it often means a perfectly healthy family is broken up, but there is nothing we can do but raise the fawn as an orphan. But no matter how difficult these calls can be, the worst is when it is clearly obvious that the fawn needs help. The worst are when the fawn is lying next to her mother, who is dead, hit by a car or a truck.

[Our fawns are all Black-tailed Deer, a subspecies of Mule Deer, the deer of the West]

Fawns who are truly orphaned seem to be traumatized when they arrive at our facility. Sometimes it can take two days before the fawn will express any interest in a bottle of milk-replacer. Convincing a traumatized fawn to take a bottle of milk is the same task as consoling a heartbroken child, so that he can eat, sleep, and resume his life. In a way it forces the wildlife care provider to form a bond with the newly admitted fawn, an idea that is at the very opposite of wildlife rehabilitation. Keeping wild patients wild, with a healthy fear of people, is as important a piece of our work as providing a proper diet and treating wounds. So warily, we proceed with fawn care.

As soon as a young fawn takes a bottle of milk (in our case, goat milk donated by local goat-keepers – and lots of it! hundreds of gallons! thank you!) we discontinue contact and start to use a bottle rack that puts a barrier between us and our patient. Once a fawn accepts a bottle in a bottle rack, he is ready to join in with our “herd” – the fawns we already have in care who are housed outdoors, and who we rarely see during the four months it takes to wean them from milk to vegetation. But those two days of close contact early on, while the fawn puts them behind her, the care provider cannot forget what it feels like to have a young deer close, who suddenly decides to accept your care and your bottle and drinks hungrily after barely moving from her corner in 48 hours.

[Please help us pay for the expenses of our busiest year ever. Your donation goes directly to the care of our injured and orphaned wild patients. Please, donate today! Thank you!]

In contact only with other fawns, over a period of months our patients are gradually weaned from milk on to vegetation, “browse” we call it, that staff and volunteers collect each day. Young deer eat a lot of leaves! Toward the end of their stay with us this year, we were collecting several wheelbarrow loads each day!

Once weaned and when we are certain that they are eating enough each day to thrive, and their spots are fading fast, we look up from our hectic summer days and see that, yes, indeed it is turning autumnal and a deer release is imminent.

One fawn per crate, each is brought to the release site. We are lucky that a good release site, protected against hunting and full of choice deer habitat is remote but not that far from our clinic. A nearby pond, forest and meadow, and the presence of a deer herd make this a great spot for our youngsters to begin their second chance at wild freedom!

It’s a great moment when the crate’s door is opened and your patient immediately puts distance between you and her!



Once safely away, a newly released fawn stops to consider the change of scenery.


Another fawn bolts for the cover of the trees.

Another fawn turns to assess the danger her caregivers pose…

Six fawns were released!

After this fawn reached the pond he stopped to cautiously consider us.

Zoomed in, it’s easy to see that this guy just doesn’t trust us, even though we delivered him over 200 bottles of milk and scores of wheelbarrow loads of leaves. His mistrust is a terrific sign of our success!


Nothing brings smiles to HWCC/bax volunteers faces like giving our wild neighbors in need a second chance at freedom!

A healthy, independent wild youngster rushing to meet her own destiny on nature’s terms… this is always the best view to be had.


Providing a safe and healthy environment for our wild orphaned patients is a critical part of meeting our mission. Requirements are skill, experience, dedication, hard work and the resources to get it done. We bring what we can to the task, but without your support, your generosity, it would be for nothing. Thank you for making our work possible! Please contribute something today. Each gift matters in the lives of our wild neighbors.

All photos: Bird Ally X

One last picture:

This fawn, burned in the Carr Fire near Redding in July was brought to HWCC/bax for treatment. Sadly, after several days in care, this brave youngster succumbed to her injuries. She tried hard. We’ll always remember her.

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