A quick video made at day’s end, the beginning of September, reflecting on our current state and our needs….
Your support makes everything we do possible. We need you. Thank you
At the End of the Day
Tag: wildlife rehabilitation
September Morn with Barn Swallows in Care [VIDEO+]
Look! A soundtrack!
First feeding of the morning, 7:45 am.
Your support means everything. We’ve already treated, cared for, raised and released 25 Swallows in 2025 (Barn, Violet-green, Cliff; family, Hirundinidae) and these 5 Barn Swallows still in care will most likely be the last Swallow babies of the year. Just in staff time alone, these babies are dear, but they’re dearness is most reliably measured in the joy they express in flight. At the end of Summer, we’re running on fumes. We need you. Please help.
A Summer of Many Baby Crows!
Until this year, our statistically normal number of Crows (technically, American Crows (Corvus brachyrhynchos) that we admit annually has fluctuated between 20 and 30, with about 75% of them being juveniles, fledglings, nestlings or hatchlings – in other words only about 1 in 4 are adults. But this year has been extraordinary. So far, we’ve already admitted 53 crows, and an astonishing 87% of them have been this year’s babies!
Crows are perhaps the best animal ever to come down the pike. What a thrill it is to help them reach their adulthood! It’s a shame of course, as all orphans are a tragedy – yet the privilege of helping these incredible beings overcome the horrifying setback of losing their parents is a joy beyond compare.
As is always the case with our patients, their wildness, their freedom and their autonomy must be respected. It’s good for people to practice this kind of respect toward other living beings in their daily lives. It’s salvific.
Often, juvenile crows make a few mistakes – perfectly normal for adventurous and bright adolescents to run astray – which separate them from their family. In such cases, if they come to us, we can sometimes get them home. Re-uniting a crow baby with crow parents is the best possible outcome. Of course that’s not always possible. In which case, we have an aviary and diet that will have to do, until they can be released, able to be independent, able to be an adult crow. Learning how to do this effectively is a life-long journey.
What pays for the process, what makes the process possible, what gives these incredible and intelligent wild neighbors the second chance they need and deserve – no matter how many we admit! – is your support. Thank you for getting us this far. Thank you for taking us further.
Raccoons of 2025! First orphans released!
The first baby raccoons of our 2025 wild orphan season were admitted on May 25. For the baby raccoons who come to us so young that their eyes are still closed, they will be in care for at least four months before they are able to be released back to their wild freedom. Our first babies released this year were a little older when admitted so they spent less time in care, only 3 months! From eyes just opening, only having a milk replace, to a 3+ kilogram omnivore with a strong desire to soak their food in water, the journey with orphaned raccoons is a privilege to share – they are smart, inventive, curious, bold, cautious, and more – and given the chance (which we never give) they could probably beat us at checkers.
Because raccoons are so smart we have to take very positive steps during their time in care to protect their wildness, respect their privacy and ensure that they each have a healthy fear of people. (If you’ve ever met a person, you can probably imagine why this fear is necessary.)
Almost every baby raccoon we admit lost their mother due to trapping. People see an adult raccoon around their property, or under their house, and they trap her and take her far away, or they kill her. In either case, they leave behind babies who will die without her unless they are rescued. Please, if you ever have a problem with a raccoon, or any wild animal, call us! We can help resolve the situation in a way that everyone, you, the raccoon mother and the raccoon babies can be satisfied – and the wild family can be kept together.
Treating wild orphans is tricky business. It requires a trained staff and it takes plenty of resources. Your support provides these crucial elements. Thank you! Thank you for making sure our region has a place that wild animals in need can be helped. We wouldn’t be here, 365 days a year (366 in leap year!) without your support.
Wood Duck orphans get Second Chance!
In mid-May, a mother Wood Duck (Aix sponsa) crossing US 101 near King Salmon was killed by a car and her babies scattered into the adjacent wetland. This has been a common occurrence for the last hundred years, ever since the rise of the worst thing to ever happen to the real world – the automobile. We posted a story about the babies in May. (which you can see here)
After six weeks in care, and many weight checks, and a lot of duckweed, the babies were at last old enough to be on their own. We took them to a nice little pond where they could get accustomed to their restored freedom and when ready, launch into the sky.
Your support, of course, is why we had staff at the ready to rescue these orphaned Wood Ducks. Your support bought the heat lamp and paid for the laundry soap that cleaned the linens we use in the duckling care. Your support provided the waterfowl aviary all our injured and orphaned ducks, geese, gulls, egrets and more use to recover. Thank you! You make our work possible. If you can please support us now. As Summer winds down our coffers are empty and we still have nearly 50 patients in care, and we still have another 400 animals we are likely to admit before the year ends. Please help.
Eight is Enough Baby Bats
It’s rare that we admit orphaned baby bats at Humboldt Wildlife Care Center. We haven’t had any baby bats in care since 2017, but this June we admittted eight Little Brown Bats (Myotis lucifugus)!
The little furry soon to be flying mammals fell from their colony in an outbuilding on the trail to the Headwaters Preserve. First we admitted three, but soon five more came in! Feeding baby bats is skill that you can’t really learn unitl you need to do it, so it had been a while since our staff had gotten any real practice. But it turns out it is like riding a bike, except you don’t have to pedal and you don’t need a helmet!
However protective gear is still required. While very rare in bats, especially bats so young, rabies is a real concern and all staff must wear protective gloves when handling bats. This protocol protects the patient and the care provider – any bat who is able to bite a person must be sent in for rabies testing, and this can only be done on a dead bat. So we make sure not to force that outcome.
Still, rabies is very rare. We’ve treated 400 bats at HWCC in the last thirteen years – and we’ve sent dozens in for testing because they’d scratched or bitten a member of the public – only bat that we’ve sent for testing has come back positive for rabies. All the same, we take the virus very seriously and we protect ourselves from transmission.
After a few weeks in care, a few had died, but the rest began to fly! Soon it was time to release. We took them back to the Redwood surrounding the building where their colony had been so that they could rejoin their community, ready for wild freedom and shouldering their task to help rid the world of mosquitoes. Go bats go!
Your support is what makes the care we provide possible. Thank you!!!
Pelagic Cormorant Returned to Oregon Colony After Care.
A Humboldt Wildlife Care Center volunteer who lives in Crescent City was spending the day on Harris Beach in Brookings when they found a stranded young Pelagic Cormorant (Urile pelagicus). They scooped up the lost youngster and called us – we met them halfway to get the new patient. (We put on some miles covering the North Coast!)
Too young to be on their own, away from the colony but not quite flighted, the little Cormorant was soon eating fish and gaining weight. Pelagic Cormorants are significantly smaller than the other two Cormorants, the Double-crested (Nannopterum auritum) and the Brandt’s (Urile penicillatus), who we also see here, but even so, they can really put away le Poisson!
After nearly three weeks, our young patient was flying and diving and ready for release. We loaded him up and took him back to Oregon and the Harris Beach colony where his family and whole gang are still enjoying the Summer. We scrambled over rocks to reach an area just across from a large rock past the break where many Pelagic Cormorants were perched and flying. Once out of the box, beyond our grasp, our young patient left our care for home and wild freedom.
Your support is why this desperate young Pelagic Cormorant had a place to go. As you see, we’re the only hope for a second chance for the seabirds of our region for a vast area of the Redwood Coast. We are not as famous as the trees, so it’s your support that we need. Thank you for keeping options open for our literally and figuratively stranded wild neighbors. If you want to help, please
photos: Laura Corsiglia/ bird ally x
The Foxes of Summer 2025
Summer 2025 has been very busy – so far the busiest on record! Humboldt Wildlife Care Center has treated over 1100 patients already this year. And this year has also brought in the most Gray Fox (Urocyon cinereoargenteus) kits on record. So far we’ve admitted had 8 kits from all around Humboldt County. Four were orphaned when their mother was shot. Two were sick babies who we were able to treat over the course of a few weeks and then return to their mother. Two were each found as individual lost babies, sick, near death, and starving.
Smart, hungry and with boundless curiousity, they are a challenge and a privilege to shepherd into wild and free adulthood! Please enjoy these photos, made as discreetly as possible during the course of their care. We respect their privacy, we protect their wildness and we make sure they can hunt and forage – this is at the heart of raising all orphaned wild babies. It’s serious work, filled with physical, mental and emotional challenges. It also takes cold hard cash. Thank you for helping us give these 8 Gray Fox kits the second chance they needed and deserved.
2025 has been a heck of year, so far and we still have months to go. As is true every Summer, it’s at this point of the year that we really need you. Our coffers are low and the need is still high!
Want to help?
photos: Laura Corsiglia/BAX
New Wild Review v6 e4 I am and I am not a Wild Robot
Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 29:26 — 33.7MB) | Embed
Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Email | RSS
Our latest podcast! In which the ways in which being a modern human who provides care for wild animals is nearly as deranged as a robot being wild.
Our Summer Newsletter
Our Summer newsletter went out late June to our “snail mail” list. Here it is, if you haven’t seen it!
Please donate.
We need your help.
