Thank you for helping this unique bird!
We have amazing news to share! Thanks to your generous support of the yellow-billed cuckoo's help me heal fund, we reached our goal to feed this beautiful bird! After spending ten months in the care of DCHS's Wildlife Center, the cuckoo was released back into the wild in May 2021. Click on the video below to watch its story from intake to release.
Thank you for giving this cuckoo a new beginning and a chance to live a healthy and happy life in the wild! Without your generous support, none of the work to help wildlife would be possible.
You can give this rare bird a new beginning!
Dane County Humane Society's Wildlife Center is currently caring for a yellow-billed cuckoo, a bird native to the Eastern United States. Yellow-billed cuckoos are a species in decline in the United States, and they are a rare patient in our Wildlife Center. This cuckoo arrived at DCHS’s Wildlife Center with bruising and feather loss after a car collision this summer. Its tail and head feathers had not grown in before it was time for migration, so we will continue to care for the bird until it is warm enough to be released back into the wild. The Wildlife Center is used to patients needing long stays to heal, but in this case, we also have a very picky eater on our hands.
Cuckoos are mainly insectivores, and more than 50% of their diet is caterpillars! To cater to this bird’s wild diet and help her thrive, we are feeding a diet of hornworms and waxworms. She eats over 50 worms a day, costing approximately $25 per day. We anticipate the total cost for food alone will be at least $3,000 before the cuckoo can return to the wild.
Please help us raise $3,000 for this unique and threatened bird's specialized diet!
DCHS's Wildlife Center is funded by generous donations from the community. Any additional funds raised will be used to continue the work our Wildlife Center staff does every day to help injured, orphaned and ill wildlife from throughout the Greater Madison region.
