This Spring we’ve been adding to our capacity to provide care for injured and orphaned wildlife on California’s North coast. See our latest developmensts in this video. And please, help us help wildlife. We need your support! You can donate here: http://birdallyx.net/donate-now/
The region that our clinic, Humboldt Wildlife Care Center, serves is huge. We routinely take in patients from over 100 miles away in each direction you can travel by land – North, South, and East – as well as the seabirds of the coast from Northern Mendocino county to Southern Oregon.
And occasionally we even treat a wild neighbor from much farther to the west… check out this short video documenting one of our recent patients from far away over the sea….
We are a small organization with a huge task. Your support makes our work possible.
These nestling Downy Woodpeckers were rescued after their nest tree fell into a creek deep in the hills of remote northern California. Waterlogged but alive, their rescuers warmed them up and searched the internet for care instructions.
Unfortunately the advice they found was bad, which was to feed them a mix of cat food and raw egg… now each baby will have to undergo a stressful cleaning process.
If you find a wild animal that needs help, do what you can to get them to get her or him out of harm’s way, but please, before you provide any additional care, call a wildlife rehabilitator. Every species has its own needs. A trained permitted wildlife rehabilitator can provide the appropriate diet, housing, and treatment that all wild patients need. Don’t trust the internet!
Still, we greatly appreciate that these birds were found and safely rescued. If you find a wild animal you think needs help, call us! 707 822 8839
Bonus: here they are “After Bathing at BAXters*
*did you get that joke? let us know on our facebook page!
Season’s Greetings Friend of Wildlife!
Each year, as our days dip toward night and we turn toward interior pleasures with our families and friends, we have an opportunity to celebrate our past year, revel in our victories, and honor our losses.
In 2015, our wildlife ambassadors have gone to over a hundred schools and groups to promote co-existence with our natural world. We’ve helped more than 5000 callers with a wildlife concern. At Humboldt Wildlife Care Center we have treated nearly 1100 injured and orphaned wild neighbors.
Not every case ends as we wish, of course. Many patients are too severely injured to be successfully rehabilitated. We honor their memory. We redouble our efforts to help eliminate causes of injury.
And thankfully many of our patients do get a second chance!
Like the Gray Fox on this card: Brought to us on a Sunday morning in late Summer, this beautiful and fierce adult had her head caught in a hard plastic cup. Whether some kind of trap or a terrible accident, her predicament had been caused by people. Unable to hunt, she’d nearly starved.
We cut away the cup, treated her wounds, and provided her safe-haven so that her health could recover. When she’d nearly doubled in weight and was raring to go, she was released back to her wild and free life. And one small injustice among the daunting environmental challenges of our time was righted.
That’s how we work, case by case, life by life.
This season of gratitude and appreciation, we thank you for your support and for your love for all that is wild. Thank you for helping us give this fox and all our patients a second chance!
We wish you a happy season, a joyful solstice and prosperous new year. We look forward to another year of meeting our mission with your continued support
In alliance with the wild,
the Staff and Volunteers of Bird Ally X/Humboldt Wildlife Care Center
A recent patient, this female Wood Duck was reported to have hit a barn trying ot out fly a Falcon. She was found stunned on the ground. She made a complete and quick recovery and was released back to the area she was found!
Help support our efforts to raise healthy, wild orphans and provide quality care for all wildlife caught in civilization’s many snares. Please contribute to our Fall campaign today. $ = food, medicine, water. Every donation helps!
video: Bonnie MacRaith/Bird Ally X
As we posted a couple of weeks ago, it’s the time of year that the orphaned raccoons we’ve cared for over the Summer are reaching an age that we can return them to their wild, free lives.
We often talk about the efforts that we can all make to co-exist with our wild neighbors as well as the work we do to keep our patients wild. No cuddling, we keep our voices down when we work near them. We strive to respect their wild natures and to protect them from the harm that comes to wild animals who don’t have an appropriate aversion to humans and human activity.
Another thing that we work for, when it comes to raising orphaned wild babies, is developing ways for them to learn the skills they will need to survive on their own. This is the hardest task of all, and involves every aspect of their care! Housing set-up that includes natural elements to imitate forest, field, stream or ocean, as best we can, foods selected that are similar to what an individual of any species might eat, and presenting the food in a manner that will teach hunting or foraging skills are all important aspects that must be included.
For raccoons, this task is as complex as they are. So, at our last release we were very gratified to watch one of our patients, moments after release, make her way downstream about 50 yards and then, to our happy surprise, start fishing! We are thrilled to see our hard work pay off and to see this young raccoon demonstrate that she knows what to do when presented with a real field and stream.
Check out this 3 minute video of our latest release (including the act of catching her first wild fish) and enjoy it too, because it’s your support that makes this work possible. So THANK YOU!!
Exploring the wide and wild world!
Agility and strength – fostering these while in captivity is a challenge when raising wild orphans! Our staff and your support make it possible!
[We are still deep in our fall fundraiser, nearly halfway to our goal of $10,000! Last week it seemed we would never make it and now it looks like we have a fighting chance! Help us cross the finish line! Every donation is tax-deductible, and every donation, no matter the size, goes directly toward meeting our mission! Your help is essential! Donate today!
Thank you for being a part of this live-saving work. Thank you for your love of the WILD!]
video taken by Laura Corsiglia and Lucinda Adamason for Bird Ally X; all photos Laura Corsiglia/BAX
2015 has not been a very good year for Common Murres (Uria aalge californica) on the west coast of North America. From Southern California to British Columbia, thousands of these seabirds, mostly young of the year, have been found on beaches dead or dying of starvation.
Bird Ally X co-directors Marie Travers and Shannon Riggs, DVM have been responding to this “crash” in Southern California at Pacific Wildlife Care in Morro Bay where Dr Riggs is director of animal care. This year they’ve treated well over a 150 young Common Murres. San Francisco Bay area wildlife care providers have been inundated with starving young Murres as well.
On the North Coast, the situation has been slightly different, our cooler temperatures and distance form the larger fishing ports and urban impact has left more room in the ocean for our seabird neighbors. Even so, Humboldt Wildlife Care Center has admitted nearly 50 starving juveniles since the “die-off” began in July. That’s a lot of work for our small facility and it’s a lot of fish, too.
[Help support our efforts to raise healthy, wild orphans and provide quality care for all marine wildlife caught in civilization’s many snares. Please contribute to our Fall campaign today. $ = Fish, medicine, water. Every donation helps!]
We posted earlier this Summer when we had a pool full of these beautiful elegant birds. Now as the season turns cool, many are ready for release back to their oceanic lives.
Thank you for being a part of this life saving work. Your support keeps us and our patients afloat.
Video/Photos: BAX/Ruth Mock, BAX/Stephanie Owens
[Help support our efforts to raise healthy, wild orphans and also prevent disruptions to wild families in the first place. Please contribute to our Fall campaign today. Every donation helps!]
Each year at Humboldt Wildlife Care Center, we can expect to treat a certain number of orphaned raccoons (Procyon lotor). Although we engage in outreach to promote humane solutions to denning mother raccoons, trying to keep wild families together, the simple fact is that several times each Spring and Summer we admit small groups of raccoon babies whose mothers have been either shot or trapped and “relocated” (illegal and inhumane, usually results in the death of the mother and, unless they are found and taken to a wildlife rehabilitator, the death of her babies that remain). On average we raise 20 to 30 raccoon babies at our Northern California clinic every season. This year we’ve had 25 (19 right now!) babies in care.
Although caring for orphaned raccoons is a common task for wildlife rehabilitators across the continent, it’s a very specialized skill, requiring experience, commitment, financial resources and appropriate housing. Without a mother who will show them the ways of the world, orphaned raccoons in care must learn to hunt, forage, climb, fish in rivers and most importantly remain wild and “untamed.” One of the cutest animals, people often try to raise raccoons as pets. This is never a good idea. Raccoons are wild animals, not pets, and deserve their freedom as much we deserve ours.
At BAX/HWCC we put a lot of effort into making sure the raccoons we care for eat the most natural and nutritionally complete diet we can provide. We place great emphasis on keeping a solid barrier between them and us, their care providers. Their survical depends on their fear of humans. An orphaned raccoon’s best shot at a happy life depends on all of these elements.
After four months in care, we just recently released the first 6 youngsters who were ready to begin their lives back in the wild. Check out the video and the photos – watch wild raccoons enter the wild for the first time since they lost their mama…
The first whiff of freedom (and a real river!)
Over the river and into the woods, to Grandmother’s house they go.
Just a few steps from the cloaking device that mother Earth provides all her children…
Taken with a zoom lens, one last view before these youngsters ‘disappear’ into the real world!
As with all we do, it’s your support that makes it possible. Thank YOU!
all photos: BAX/Laura Corsiglia; video BAX/Matt Gunn
Over the Summer BAX/Humboldt Wildlife Care Center has been treating two Osprey (Pandion haliaetus), one of whom came from Red Bluff and the other from Modesto. (read more about their care here)
A fire swept through an Osprey nest in Red Bluff, CA, a small city in the far northern end of the Sacramento Valley. One adult and one nearly fledged (ready to leave nest) chick were rescued and taken to Tehama Wild Care. After stabilizing the birds their only injuries appeard to be the singed feathers both had suffered. Feathers of course are a critical component of any bird’s health and well-being. Feathers make flight possible. Feathers allow hot-blooded birds to maintain a stable temperature (normal for most birds is between 103 and 106 degrees!). Unhealthy or damaged feathers could cause life-threatening challenges. Early in care, the young bird died, while the adult did well. Still the adult was very stressed by captivity and would dive in a threatening manner toward her human caregivers!
Soon after we admitted another Osprey chick who had been found out of her nest as a very small bird and hand-raised by our colleagues at Stanislaus Wildlife Care Center, near Modesto. This young bird now needed time in an aviary to be able to develop flight skills and also be monitored for appropriate behavior and fear of humans. Fortunately for her, we had an adult in care and good housing for the job so the young bird was sent north. The two birds quickly bonded, assuming a kind of parent/chick relationship. We knew then that the prognosis for a happy outcome was good.
After 5 weeks in an aviary together, gaining weight and strength, developing flight and eating a lot of fish ($ = fish!) we were able to determine that their feather conditon was adequate to be released – no good would come from more time in the aviary, with the layer of stress caused by captivity factored in, and the need for the young bird to learn real world skills that her new surrogate mother could teach her in the wild. Strong and healthy and sick of us, it was time for them to go.
[Fall Fundraiser: Bird Ally X/Humboldt Wildlife Care Center need your support! Summer bills must be paid. Winter maintenance must be done. Food and medicine for patients must be purchased. Utilities too! Without you we cannot keep our doors open, ready to accept into care all native California wildlife, orphaned or injured by the impact of our towns, our highways, our trash, our reckless disregard for our wild neighbors. Please contribute today. Any amount helps. Please give what you can.]
Yesterday, BAX co-director Laura Corsiglia and volunteer Bonnie MacRaith took the two birds on the long drive back to Red Bluff, back to adult’s home place and with her new kid in tow.
After returning to Humboldt, Bonnie stopped in at the clinic – this had been her first wild release… her eyes welling up, she reported the joy of seeing the adult fly out over the Sacramento River, and the youngster, who had come out of the carrier first and stood looking about, leaping into flight right behind her and following out across the river and into the sky and into perfect wild freedom.
Another open door to a wild and free future!
Juvenile Osprey wonders what to do with the wide open possibilities.
The adult Osprey seemed to know exactly where she was and what she wanted. Out of the carrier and into the sky!
And the youngster followed close behind…
The last glimpse! Good luck fishing!
As is always the case, our work is possible because of mutual aid between wildlife rehabilitators, help from agencies like the US Fish and Wildlife Service and CA Dept of Fish and Wildlife, and most importantly, your support. Your donations pay for everything we do! Food, medicine, appropriate housing – all of the critical elements to these birds’ happy outcome is the direct result of your donation. We are a very small organization with a huge task to do. Please give what you can today!
All photos: BAX/Laura Corsiglia
