Wildlife Patient Stories

A New (Temporary) Home for WildCare’s Wildlife Ambassadors Watch WildCare’s beloved Wildlife Ambassador pool birds and our venerable Turkey Vulture, Vladimir, entering their bright and spacious Transition enclosures for the first time in the video below. Vladimir is a very elderly vulture (he’s 38 years old!) and he’s on medications for the limp you might…

WildCare admits a surprising number of animals entangled in soccer netting. Soccer goal netting is thick and durable, and it’s always hung at either end of a wide-open grassy field.If you’ve never walked a soccer pitch at dawn or dusk, you may not realize how much wildlife passes across, around, and over a playing field when…

It was a bat emergency in Bakersfield!WildCare’s Director of Animal Care, Melanie Piazza received a call on Saturday morning that hundreds of baby Mexican Free-tailed bats had fallen from their roost under a freeway overpass. The temperatures in Bakersfield reached 118 last weekend, and baby bats were tumbling onto the sweltering concrete. Someone had spotted the…

WildCare’s Wildlife Hospital is at its busiest right now, but our team is never too busy to help an animal in need! A panicked pedestrian came to WildCare’s front gate, pointing at the creek behind him and saying that there was a skunk with a trap on her foot dragging her way up the tidal canal that…

Peregrine Falcon Fledglings 2024 has been a banner year for young raptors at WildCare, including fledgling Peregrine Falcons! We have admitted and treated five of these extraordinary birds this summer. UPDATE: As we were writing this story, a sixth young Peregrine Falcon was admitted!The bird in this photo came from downtown San Francisco. In his…

At WildCare we are always impressed at the lengths to which raptor parents will go to raise their young.In the week before Father’s Day, our thoughts have turned especially to raptor dads who work tirelessly to catch and bring food to their always-hungry chicks.The male Red-shouldered Hawk helps with nest-building and incubation of the eggs.…

Wildlife experts up and down the California coast are concerned that Brown Pelicans are facing another “stranding event” like the one we saw in 2022.That year, our partner organization International Bird Rescue (IBR) admitted over 350 emaciated pelicans, 19 of which passed through WildCare’s doors. Just this week, WildCare has admitted eight Brown Pelicans, which is…

Five baby skunks arrived at the Wildlife Hospital after being rescued from a freeway on-ramp! Fortunately a driver saw the five little skunks, tails high, marching up the on-ramp and managed to catch them before they got into oncoming traffic. Skunks at this age are much too young to be on their own without Mom.…

Although Great Horned Owls are very good parents, they aren’t exactly champion nest builders. In fact, these large owls don’t even build their own nests– they take over the already-built nests of other birds like hawks or ravens in which to raise their young. The parents of these three owlets live in the Marin County of…