Tag: Keep Wild Families Together

A Wild Mother’s Day of Reunion.

Posted on by Monte Merrick

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.

Posted on by Monte Merrick

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!!)

Posted on by Monte Merrick

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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A Fledgling Hummingbird is Reunited

Posted on by Monte Merrick

Curiosity is the hallmark of childhood. Every day, for the young of any species, is a voyage of discovery. A child outside has no limits but her own between herself and the whole wide world. A young kid turns over rocks, follows a trail that leads under bushes. A boy finds on the ground a tiny buzzing bird and picks the bird up and carries the bird home in his jacket pocket.

Each year during Spring and Summer at Humboldt Wildlife Care Center we admit more than a few young fledgling birds who were picked up by kids and brought to the classroom or brought home. If these birds aren’t injured and we can learn where the kids found them, we try to get them home, back to their parents, and their interrupted lives.

At the end of July, a young Allen’s Hummingbird (Selasphorus sasin), just learning to fly, was found by some children near the school in Samoa, on the peninsula across Humboldt Bay from Eureka. The tiny bird was in good health, without injury. After some careful questioning of the kids’ mother, we had an idea where the young hummingbird was found by the young human. So we set out in search of the bird’s parents.

Our admission examination found no injuries or problems – just a healthy fledgling bird who happened to be seen by a curious young kid while vulnerable during first flight attempts.

The dune forest where the young bird had been found.

Adult hummingbirds were seen immediately in the area.

We placed the fledgling on a nearby branch

Our reunite team backed up to allow the adults to feel more comfortable in approaching the young bird. 

In moments an adult female came down the fledgling and began to offer food.

One of the great joys of wildlife rehabilitation is the chance to reunite families. Too often we aren’t able to get young back with their parents.  In those cases we have good practices that help us raise healthy juveniles for release, but we don’t kid ourselves. NO one is a better hummingbird parent than a hummingbird’s parent. Making wild families whole again is as important a component of our work as the care we provide and the injuries we prevent through consultation and education.

What follows is a series of photos of the adults repeated trips to feed and care for the young bird that they nearly lost.

     
     
     

Caring for injured wildlife, helping resolve conflicts between human concerns and the needs of wild animals, reuniting wild families: each of these are a critical part of the work we do – work your support makes possible. So far, 2018 has been the busiest year HWCC has ever had in its 39 year history. We need your support now more than ever. Please, help us help our wild neighbors.

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A Summer Like No Other! So Many Mammals!

Posted on by Monte Merrick

2017 has been unusual. While it’s perfectly normal right now, in the height of our Spring and Summer wild baby season, that we’re very busy with a huge demand on our resources, what’s strange is the number of baby mammals we’ve admitted. Typically our patient caseload is 75% birds, and 25% mammals, with only a few reptiles such as snakes, lizards and turtles admitted for care, year in and year out. This year though we’ve seen a large increase in orphaned baby mammals. Instead of 25%, we are at 39% mammals for 2017 to date!

In part this is because we’ve started to accept more wild babies from northern Mendocino County, where permitted wildlife rehabilitators are scarce. (But there is one! Shout out to Ronnie James of Woodlands Wildlife near Fort Bragg!) That counts for less than a dozen raccoons however and not a 16% increase. So what else might be the cause? We don’t know.

What we do know is that we are as active as ever helping people resolve wildlife/human conflicts peacefully and keeping wild families together. This has been the wettest year in six years of keeping our digital database. Between loss of habitat, encroachment on the wild, increased traffic and of course the great destabilizer, climate change, it’s nearly impossible to know at this time what exactly is happening. Every day we get calls about stranded or orphaned youngsters in need of help. Every day we hear about dead wild mothers on the highway.

Every story of the wild animals we treat has heartbreak in it. This adult Gray Fox (Urocyon cinereoargenteus) is a nursing mom. She was hit by a car and found on the side of the road on the north side of Crescent City. Her first week in care, she was barely aware of her surroundings or the handling she endured while we proved supportive care. 

Gradually she regained her wits. As soon as she could stand and walk, we moved her to an outdoor enclosure where her agility and alertness began to quickly return.

Her wariness on the day of her release examination was a welcome sight. As she tried to evade capture she demonstrated a crucial intelligence and bravery that she will need when she’s home in the wild.

This net capture is the last indignity that she must face before freedom!

Her release very near her rescue site: the mother Fox takes a cautious moment to look around.

And then she breaks for it! – into the hedgerow, into the tangled bank!


And she is gone, back into her realm, her freedom – out of our grasp and away from our gaze. The luck of being found and rescued saved her life. It is impossible, knowing she was a nursing mother, to not acknowledge her kits, as many as four of them, who died without her care after she was hit by the car. But she is in great health otherwise, a strong and muscular vixen, who has lived to raise another family. 

How do we provide this care to our region’s injured and orphaned wild animals, every day of the year? Easy. Only with your support. Please donate today. Our Season is only half way through! We need your help! Donate Now.

So far this season we’ve admitted twice as many juvenile Striped Skunks(Mephitis mephitis) than in any year previously!

While it is easy to avoid getting sprayed during care procedures, such as weight checks and other examinations of our young skunk patients, there is still a psychological barrier to overcome when handling them. Fortunately at this age, their defensive spray is fairly mild.

In our skunk housing, youngsters learn to dig for insects, eat meat, and hide from threats, among other skills they will need to succeed as adults. Your support makes our facility possible! Thank you! 


A young skunk from this year’s babies smells freedom again, and it is sweet.

A very unusual patient! We treat many bats year ’round, but this is only the second time in 6 years that we’ve admitted a very young Little Brown Bat (Myotis lucifugus). This little bat came in nearly fur-less, eyes closed and in need of regular formula feedings. We were unable to locate his colony and return him, so we raised him at our clinic. Now weaned and eating strictly insects, soon he will begin flying, and soon after that he will be free. 

Brush rabbits(Sylvilagus bachmani) are often victims of house cats, especially when they are very young and first out of the nest…  this baby succumbed to the infection caused by the cat bites he received. Free-roaming cats take a terrible toll on young wild animals. 

Almost every Black-tailed Deer fawn (Odocoileus hemionus) that we treat has been traumatized. Usually found along the side of the road with their dead mother, they come in to care obviously depressed. It can take real effort and convincing to get a fawn who has just seen their mother killed by a vehicle to accept a bottle. For the past two years we have been feeding goat milk instead of formula with good results. Availability is much improved and we receive occasional donations of fresh milk from our neighbors who have goats! Thanks to everyone who has donated goat milk!

Housed outside we keep a distance from these fawns, providing them with fresh leaves every day supplemented with milk fed in a blind bottle rack. When they are weaned we begin planning their release. Most fawns that we receive calls about are actually fine and don’t need rescue! Like with Rabbits, Does park their babies someplace safe while they forage, returning now and again to nurse. If you see a fawn lying in the grass, simply back away and give them space. Unless a dead mother is seen, in nearly all cases she is nearby watching. As always, if you are unsure, give us a call and we can help you figure out what’s best.

We currently have 20 Raccoons  (Procyon lotor) in care. Labor intensive, hungry and with an insatiable curiosity that makes housing them for the duration of their care a challenge, Raccoons are one of our more common patients. Uncommonly intelligent, steps to preserve their wildness are critical to their success. A raccoon unafraid of a back porch is soon going to be in serious trouble. Many people have no qualms about trapping and killing these hot sparks of wild life. The world as it is needs as much intelligence as it can find. Help keep the world safe for these natural geniuses. Don’t leave food or pet food outside, keep your garbage secure – all wildlife will benefit from these steps.

Opossums (Didelphis virginiana) were once considered non-native on the West coast of North America, thought to have been introduced by immigrants from the East. Now it’s not so certain. Native to the areas of northern Mexico directly South of their current West coast range, it is considered possible and even likely that their range has expanded on their own steam as they migrate and spread into habitat that suits them. Short-lived (most wild opossums live no more than 4 years) these unobtrusive, nocturnal animals, North America’s only marsupial, are the mammal most often cared for in California. Litters often have ten or more babies. When a mother is hit by a car, she often has a pouch full of nursing youngsters. Opossums are on the go all night long. Be vigilant when driving!

Young opossums in the first stages of learning to feed themselves are offered a dish of the same formula that they are fed on schedule. Soon we’ll add egg, squash, and then bits of  slivered fish. Preparing healthy wild diets is one of the pleasures of our work. Your support makes it possible!

In their outdoor housing, young Opossums  learn to climb, recognize appropriate food, exercise, and dig for insects. As soon as they are the right weight and exhibit the necessary skills, they venture out into the world, making their way. If you see an opossum, remember, we are each sojourners in this world, and there are none abiding… Give an opossum a break. It is impossible to order the parts of the universe by most and least important. Let’s help each other not make the foolish mistake of thinking we can! 

A tiny Deer Mouse is fed formula. The humble Deer Mouse (Peromyscus maniculatus) is native over much of the western continent. Only occasionally do we treat them at this age, but we do see adults throughout the year. Once you’ve held a 2 gram baby mouse in your hand, and wanted them to thrive, what can you do but make sure that a heat lamp, a regular round of formula, and a chance to grow and learn are provided. We have a lot of mouths to feed and a mission to feed all who come our way. 

As noted above, we don’t know what the difference is that makes this year so full of orphaned mammals in our care. We only know that we have a mission to provide where needed to injured and orphaned wild neighbors and to work to build a way to continue helping wildlife in distress as we enter a very de-stabilized future. We won’t be able to do this with out your help.

This part has always been true.

2017 has seen much uncertainty, and we feel it too. Support for the care of the almost forgotten wild babies of the world can be hard to come by when so much anxiety about so many predicaments is a-foot. Just two weeks ago, scientists warned in the New York Times that we are entering an era of “biological annihilation”.

It is here, where we live, where see the impacts of such horrors. And it will be us, in our communities, who do what we can to soften the blows to the innocent wild among us. Please help us meet our mission. Your donation today and every day goes directly toward care of our patients and advocacy for all of the wild. Thank you for your support! Donate Here.  

Photos: Bird Ally X/ Laura Corsiglia

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Mercy, Mercy, Mercy, Baby Skunks!

Posted on by Monte Merrick

This story comes with recommended listening, Cornell Dupree playing Joe Zawinul’s Mercy, Mercy, Mercy:

It happens and you don’t even know why. Suddenly – you’ve just learned to walk, just learning to find bugs, just seeing the night sky – you’re alone. Your siblings too. Maybe your mother was hit by a car. Maybe she was trapped and killed or taken far away. But no matter what happened, she didn’t come back ever again. A day goes by, then two, then three. Before you know it you don’t want to run anymore and then, if you’re lucky, one of those people finds you, picks you up, puts you in a box. If you make it to a wildlife rehabilitator, you’re going to be in boxes of one kind or another for a little while. But if all goes well, you’ll be free again.

***

Last week at Humboldt Wildlife Care Center, we admitted our first baby Striped Skunks (Mephitis mephitis) of the season. 3 youngsters were found in a backyard in Eureka. They’d been seen for a couple of days, but no mother was observed at any time. When one of them was found not moving, all 3 were captured and brought to our clinic.

Right on the edge of weaning, they are old enough to eat solid food and can be housed in our outdoor small mammal housing. But they are far too young to be on their own with no protection and no one to teach them how to find food, how to hunt.

For the next 8 weeks, these distant cousins to the otters (and even more distant to ourselves) will learn to forage for insects, find prey, and recognize the foods that will sustain them in adulthood. We’ll measure their progress and keep a distance between to protect their wildness and preserve their healthy fear of human beings.

We’ll need your help.

What follows are photographs from their first day in care. Now they are housed outdoors, in privacy. We’ll post more photographs as we can get opportunity during health checks over the coming weeks. Right now, they are gaining weight and using their new little teeth very well.

An exam of each skunk was made. One of them, the male of the three, was cold, lethargic and dehydrated, the two sisters were in much better shape. Each was given warmed subcutaneaous fluids. The male, initially  found immobile in the grass, had to be kept in an incubator for some time, but soon recovered and rejoined his siblings.
Tail up, the weaker of the three begins to signal his recovery as he signals his alarm at waking up in an incubator.
Oh yes, these teeth are ready from something to chew on!

The two healthier sisters inside their initial housing to observe their stability, learn more about their state of health and make sure that they are eating. The brother soon joined them.

At this age, skunks don’t have much ability to spray. Still the siblings stamp out warnings and lift their tails in mock battle. Play leads to adulthood!

It can be a hard sell – that these skunks matter. That any skunks matter. In a world such as ours, with demons at the helm, who put every thing that matters up on blocks in the front yard – the chopping block or the auction block – it can seem like we’ve got more pressing matters. But we don’t. So much of what we suffer in this world is the result of a human arrogance that values its own engorgement over the very mystery that produces appetites at all. In this world, pleading the case of the wounded Robin, the orphaned skunk, the broken-winged gull can seem like too little too late. But if we’re going to have a big world worth protecting, we’ll find it the small miracles that surround us, the dense feathers of the seabird’s belly, the strong musk of an evening’s encounter.

Please help us care for these beings whose lives are their own, who determine their own value, victims of our thoughtless creations. Donate (here) if you can. Thank you.

photos: Bird Ally X/ Laura Corsiglia

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Winter Showers Brought Mallard Flowers

Posted on by Monte Merrick

So far in 2017 we have admitted for care nearly two times the number of orphaned Mallards as we did by this date in 2016! And 2016 had been a record year for Mallard babies, in which we also saw a dramatic increase over the previous year’s orphaned Mallard caseload!

Mallard chicks are orphaned in any number of ways – most commonly by cars and dogs. A mother Mallard lays her eggs in a hidden nest and when they hatch, she leads her precocial young to water. Along the way the new family must cross roads and backyards, both of which are fraught with danger – cars, dogs, unsupervised kids – the human built world has provided little else but obstacles to our wild neighbors.

Even now, while writing this, a group of Mallards are in the middle of being rescued off US 101 about 20 miles south of our clinic: if their mother can’t be located or doesn’t return, then those ducklings will come to our facility to be cared for and given appropriate housing for them to learn to be adult ducks.

As of today, we have nearly two dozen orphaned Mallards in care. Each day that passes we might admit another 8 or 9 who’ve lost their mothers to a car, a dog, or some other calamity. Your support makes our treatment possible.

In care at only a few days old, these orphaned Mallards find safety under a heat lamp, huddled together with a feather duster as a comfort against the loss of their mother.
Old playpens are very useful for small animal housing. They work for Mallard orphans exactly as they do for human children – keeping them safe and contained. Of course for ducklings, some crucial additions are needed – such as a small ‘pond’ filled with the most important diet item we offer – duckweed!
Boxed for daily weight checks: before these youngsters can move outside and face cold nights with no mother, they have to gain some body mass. We check them every day to make sure they’re headed in the right direction!

“I weigh about 30 grams when I first leave my egg. I gain 5 to 10 grams a day until I move outside.”

While the intimacy we share with our patients isn’t the reason we help wild orphans make it to adulthood, a side benefit of our work is the closeness to willful, untamed nature that we experience each and every day.

Tracking the progress of each patient is a critical component to providing conscientious care. Weights are recorded in each patient’s record daily, or as needed.

Once ducklings (and goslings too!) are housed outdoors, we handle Mallard orphans a lot less – as they approach their release weight, we check them only once a week. Reduced handling means wildlife stays wild!

Weight check round up! They don’t like it at all, but we do need to make sure that our care is working.

Pre-release: this is the last housing these birds will ever know (hopefully!) Our waterfowl aviary can house up to a dozen young Mallards. If the steady rise in orphaned Mallards continues, we’ll need to increase our capacity. 

Raising Mallards isn’t easy. Proper housing and diet are critical. Both of these require a lot of water. Your support keeps the water flowing and the ducklings growing! Losing your mom is pretty bad – most wild babies don’t survive such a tragedy. But at least here in Humboldt County, thanks to you, these young orphans still have a chance to live their free and wild lives. Can you help with their care? If so, donate here. Thank you!

all photos: Laura Corsiglia/ Bird Ally X

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Raccoons Orphaned by Trapping in Care Now

Posted on by Monte Merrick

Every Spring it’s the same story: a Raccoon is seen around the home, going into a crawlspace, maybe heard in the attic… and the human resident opens the phone book to find help. A quick call to the pest control company and soon they’re spending a couple dollars paying for that company to trap the Raccoon.

The Raccoon, eager to find food, is easily trapped (maybe not on the first try though, maybe first some other animal is trapped and loses his or her life too). The pest control company takes the Raccoon away (to be killed) and soon after, a day, two days, three days, Humboldt Wildlife Care Center gets a call: Raccoon babies can be heard behind a wall, next to the tub, in the attic – somewhere, making their small chattering sounds, hungry, cold and dying. We take those orphans into care. Without charge.  these are the lucky ones, the ones who are found. How many Raccoon orphans starve to death under houses and in attics after their mother has been trapped or shot is just anther unknowable tragic cost in world full of them.

This is exactly how our first Raccoon babes of 2017 came into care this weekend. Two days without their mother, who was trapped and killed, these babies are facing a terrible deficit. Warmth, fluids, and a gradual introduction to formula, which will sustain them until they are weaned in approximately 6 weeks, is the first step. If they make it through this process and recover from hypothermia and dehydration they’ll have another 10-12 weeks in captive care, learning to climb, hunt, fish and forage: in short, all the skills that their mother would have taught them. If all goes well, sometime in September or October, hopefully we’ll be posting a story like this one from a past Summer:

Killing mother Raccoons can be costly to a homeowner, and obviously the cost to the mother Raccoon is the greatest that can be paid, and the cost to her babies is higher than we’d wish on any youngsters. Yet, it happens every year, in every community, in every county, in every state. Every year we put out messages and pleas to not trap wildlife, especially in the Spring. In Spring, trapping a wild animal invariably leads to orphans. It is senseless, stupid and needs to stop. We need your help. Spread the word. Trapping is cruel, costly, immoral and ineffective. If you have a conflict with a wild animal, seek humane help, such as we offer every day of the year.

On this Mother’s Day, how about spreading some of that love and appreciation to wild mamas who need us to learn to live with them peacefully and humanely.

If you’d like to contribute to the cost of caring for this unfortunate mother’s young, please donate here now. Thank you!!

 

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Mallard Ducklings Were Lost and Now are Found

Posted on by Monte Merrick

Mallard (Anas platyrhynchos) mothers for millions of years have selected safe secluded places to lay their eggs. Under bushy plants, in high grasses, and not more than a day hike from a nice pond. Once her babies hatch from their eggs, they are quickly on the move. Unlike songbirds whose young are altricial, meaning they are unable to do anything for themselves at all but open their mouths and accept food, ducklings are precocial – they come into the world ready to walk around and feed themselves. Within hours of hatching, mother Mallards lead their babies to water.

[Please support our work. Your contribution goes directly to the care of injured and orphaned wild animals and keeps our doors open! We need you! Please help. You can donate here now.] 

Of course in the intervening years, human have arrived on the scene, and in the last few thousand years began the process of covering the Earth in roads and other serious threats to our wild neighbors. Now an obstacle course of mayhem stands in the way of Mallard families and the ponds where they must grow, develop and learn to be successful adults. A mother killed by a car in traffic might leaving a dozen day old ducklings scrambling for their innocent lives. An off-leash dog might scatter a family with some babies never re-grouped. However it happens, thousands upon thousands of Mallard babies are separated from their families in California each year. Every year Mallards are the avian species most frequently admitted for rehabilitation in our state. Swimming pools with no way for a duckling to get out, pollution, traffic, dogs and cats, curious unsupervised children – the threats to young ducklings in human society are nearly endless.

At Humboldt Wildlife Care Center, we see less victims of these threats simply because we have a much lower human population. Still, we raise anywhere between 20 and 40 Mallard ducklings each year.

Orphaned Mallard patients from 2016, learning about duckweed, the miracle food!

Our three young Mallards who are currently in care, under a heat lamp in our indoor housing. Soon they’ll be old enough to be housed outside.

Last week we admitted the first Mallard orphans of the year. Found scrambling though a backyard in the coastal community of Manila, these three babies are doing very well, now. Currently housed indoors until they are big enough to stay warm through the night, soon we’ll move them to our specially built duckling pond and then to our waterfowl aviary where they will continue to grow and develop in relative privacy – their wildness respected and protected – until they are old enough to fend for themselves. When they are ready, after about six weeks in care, they’ll be returned to their free and wild lives.

Right now we are entering the busiest time of our year. Every day from now through the rest of Summer we will be helping keep wild families together and raising wild orphans when we must. The workload is intense and so is our need for your support. We are striving raise $25,ooo by May 31. We have $20,000 to go. Your support makes all the difference. Please donate today. Thank you!

photos: Bird Ally X

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What Tool Saves the Most Wild Lives? (hint: you may be reading this on it right now…)

Posted on by Monte Merrick

The answer: the telephone!

At Humboldt Wildlife Care Center, BAX treats well over a thousand wild animals each year, animals who would have certainly died without our help. When we think about the patients that have passed though our clinic, over the years, and gotten a second chance at wild freedom, or even those who we’ve been able to at least end their suffering, we are staggered by the numbers.

Still this number is very small compared to those we’ve helped without ever laying a hand on them.

Each day, staff at our Care Center answer calls from people all over our region who have encountered or have a conflict with a wild animal. Often these callers are frustrated and may even have very negative feelings about the animal –  a skunk in the yard that frightens their dog, raccoons getting into a crawl space, birds nesting in a chimney. Some callers aren’t hostile toward wildlife, but concerned about a possible problem – a deer fawn found along a trail while hiking, a skunk out in the daylight during baby season.

We get thousands of these calls yearly. No matter what the nature of the call is, it’s our task to make sure that each situation resolves peacefully for the animal. There are plenty of resources available for solutions that result in wild animals being killed – trapping and relocating, trapping and killing, shooting, poisoning – all manner of inhumane solutions can be found easily. Peaceful and humane resolution of conflicts between people and the Wild, however is strictly the name of our game.

Every Spring, our volunteers have a chance to practice the delicate art of advocating for and protecting our wild neighbors, and keeping wild families together. Bird Ally X produces several workshops for our staff and volunteers, as well as wildlife rehabilitators from around the state and nation. Our phone workshop is one of our most critical trainings. While the direct care we provide is important, good work done on the phone can prevent many of the injuries and deaths before care is needed. As the old saying goes, an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.

Last weekend, we offered this workshop to our newest volunteers. e were fortunate in that we had a nice Sunday afternoon, no wind or rain. We had a good time practicing these skills, using real world examples, and learning how to be powerful advocates for and protectors of our wild neighbors.

Describing the resources we rely on so that our volunteers are confident that they can give sound advice.

Demonstrating a typical call.

Because of the nearby Humboldt State University and the attraction of the Redwood Coast, our volunteers and neighbors come from around the world and around the state, bringing a wealth of experience and commitment to our work. Without volunteers, there would be no care for wild animals in need.

In the real world, you can always “phone a friend.” A workshop participant seeks advice while in the middle of his call.

The workshops we produce are a critical part of our mission. Not only are we committed to providing the best care we can, we also strive to make improvements in our field and help develop the next generation of wildlife care providers. Your support allows Humboldt Wildlife Care Center to provide direct care for wild animals in trouble, prevent injuries with our Humane Solutions program, and also, help protect the future of wildlife care with trainings and workshops. And as we enter our busiest season, the skills our volunteers learn will serve our wild neighbors immediately as well!

As always, it’s is your support that makes this possible. We are a very small organization facing global problems as locally as can be imagined. Our work is possible, our facility exists, next generations learn, because of your support. Thank you!

We need to raise $25,000 by May 31, 2017 in order to be ready to meet the challenge of our coming busy season… our region’s injured and orphaned wild animals depend on you. Please help if you can. Follow this link to donate now or become a Sustaining Member with a monthly donation.

 

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