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Reading a draft of an essay on ethics for our profession.
Tag: wild babies
New Raccoon Housing Coming Soon with Your Help!
We’ve started building our raccoon housing at our new site, but it’s Summer and our resources are thin! We need your help! Please donate to help us develop our new facility and keep our patients fed – we have nearly 75 orphans in care! Thank you for keeping our doors open and always striving to improve!!!!
Fawns Need Your Help!
Wild Baby Season of 2023 is nearly halfway through as we continue to build our vessel as we sail it. We need your help! Help us feed 10 Fawns, 15 Swallows, 3 Owls, 10 Mallards, 5 Skunks, 10 Raccoons, a Gray Fox and more! Please support our work if you can!
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.
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.
It’s awesome that this Jay’s mother and father were still present and that the youngster could return to their family. Of course, many young birds are actually orphaned and do need our care. While you can read on the internet that intervention may be the wrong thing, and that if you don’t know, you shouldn’t act, we can easily turn this reasoning around. In many cases we might not know enough to not act. To decide to do nothing might have consigned this wild animal to a needless death. The kind-hearted people who brought us the baby Jay were not able to tell that the baby wasn’t alone. They observed for a considerable time but didn’t see anything to allay their fears. This is perfectly fine! They aren’t professionals. They did the right thing. They called our clinic and told us what they’d seen. WIth no parents observed and the bird in the middle of an alley, with possible injuries, we suggested that they bring the baby to us. In this way we all played our part in helping protect this bird and gave them a second chance.
Want to help us provide the kind of care and attention that all wild neighbors in need deserve? Please consider donating! Your generosity is what makes our work possible. Without you there would be no one to call, no one to intervene, and no one to make sure that fledglings who’ve wandered far from home will get the attention and care they deserve. Thank you!!!
A day in the life of Humboldt Wildlife Care Center, or, sailing the ship while we build it…
A video of a recent day at our new facility in Manila!
You can help us stay afloat!! Please donate to help us rebuild, and most importantly, care for the hundreds of wild orphans that are coming our way no matter what! WE NEED YOUR SUPPORT!
Thank you!!
video shot by Monte Merrick and Laura Corsilgia, edited by Soro Cyrene and Laura. (thanks Soro!!!)
Barn Owls displaced, first by hay, then by fire, fly free at last!
Six nestling Barn Owls (Tyto Alba) were admitted to Humboldt Wildlife Care Center mid-July, nestlings who’d been unintentional stowaways on a truckload of hay from Siskiyou county and delivered to Myrtletown.
We’ve posted a story about their care (check out A Half Dozen Barn Owls in a Truckload of Hay). This is the story of their release.
We’d been planning a trip deep into Siskiyou to return these owls to where they were from. In preparation the owls had each shown they could identify, capture and eat prey (a necessary step when rehabilitating orphaned hunters). They were each expert at flight, in excellent condition, and more than anything else, the aviary was clearly the biggest problem they had. It was time for freedom.
As anyone within five hours of Humboldt Bay probably knows, Siskiyou, Eastern Humboldt, and Trinity counties have been suffering from wild fires since early Summer. Unfortunately for these owls, the place on Earth where they came into the word is under a fire threat.
So we found a location that incorporated some of the characteristics of home, and hoped for the best, in a world that is becoming a patchwork, with all of us leaping from slippery rock to rock, trying to keep it going as we cross this torrent.
A Summer Full of Wild Babies and an Urgent Need!
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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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
A Half-Dozen Barn Owls in a Truckload of Hay
It’s not the first time this has happened – a trailer-load of hay from Ashland or Yreka or somewhere else hours away from Humboldt Wildlife Care Center is delivered to a local ranch, only to discover nestling Barn Owls (Tyto alba) hidden with the bales. It’s happened a few times over the decade, in fact. So it wasn’t shocking when that call came in the middle of July – a load of hay just delivered in Eureka that had come down from Siskiyou County brought along the babies of a Barn Owl nest too. We admitted six nestlings that day, dehydrated, hungry and very unhappy.
As nestlings go, these six were pretty far along in their development. Three of them fledged within the first week of care and were moved to an outdoor aviary. Within two weeks, all six owls were flying. Each day each owl was getting at least one “medium” sized rat. (that’s a lot of rats – more on how we pay for it all later).
RIght now, we are helping them prepare for release by learning to hunt. The lessons tend to come pretty easily for them. You could say that they’re naturals. As soon as they demonstrate that they can support themselves, we know the time for their return the Wild is at hand.
These six Barn Owls are getting a second chance at wild freedom. They came so close to being among the many untallied victims of a human world that kills randomly and without recognition simply by operating as it was inended – We grow the hay, we store it, we ship it – none of it meant to harm owls, and none of it meant to prevent harm either. It’s in this world that we meet our mission. And we can only do it with your help. We’ve already spent over a thousand dollars on food for these beautiful and innocent wild lives. That’s only example of the real difference your support makes. Your support pays for the heating pads, the fluids, the aviary, the phone and the dedicated and skilled staff it takes to make the whole thing fly. Thank you!!
REMINDER! This is our last year at our curent location. YOur help is needed making this challenging move. Read more about it here and again, your support will help us a lot. It’s getting urgent!
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.
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!
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!
Humboldt Wildlife Care Center Now Has A Dedicated Rescue Rig!
One day last year our staff went out on a call about a sick deer. The people who called watched as we put the carrier with the deer into a small hatchback and they hatched a plan of their own. This Spring, when they purchased a new vehicle, they called to see if we could use their old car, a 1996 Volvo Wagon! They were very kind and wanted to be sure we could use the vehicle. We sure can!
The region we serve, Northern Menocino to Oregon, the Pacific Ocean to I-5, is over 20,000 square miles! (nearly twice the size of New Jersey, the state I was born in!) We put on a lot of miles and a reliable rig that is also safe is something we’ve wanted to add to our resources for years. And now we have one!
Now if you see a plain tan Volvo on the road, you never know, we just might be transporting a wild neighbor, who knows, a Northern Alligator Lizard or a Bald Eagle!
Or we might just be on our way to the North Coast Co-op, again, for more supplies for our ever increasing Spring and Summer caseload.
So to Fredyne and Gerald, who so generously passed their ride into our service, thank you!
And you know, not every donation is a car… without many small donations, we wouldnt be able to put gas in the car, or food in our patients’ bellies. If you can, please donate here. Thank you!!
