The process of wild fostering a young animal—adding it to a new wild family after it has been orphaned—is the best outcome wildlife rehabilitators can hope to have for our patients. This is because rehabilitators, despite our best efforts, will never be able to provide the exact care that a parent can for their offspring. It can be especially difficult to raise and care for particular species. For example, songbirds like Black-capped Chickadees and House Wrens certainly lean on the more challenging end of the spectrum!

Starting this year, Dane County Humane Society’s (DCHS’s) Wildlife Center officially began our own songbird wild fostering program. Volunteers helped to set up nest boxes around the property with hopes that staff could use them to encourage more birds to nest here at DCHS. That way, we might have better options to wild-foster orphans of those challenging species. So far this year, five little lives were saved by this pilot program. The very first wild-foster attempt in 2024 included three orphaned Black-capped Chickadees. They joined a box that had four other hatchlings inside with very doting parents. After the seven babies were joined together, staff observed the parents coming in and out of the box with food every 5-10 minutes.

A week later, two very young House Wrens were added to two other nest boxes. Since one nestling was much larger than the other, they were split into different boxes so that they would better match the size of their new siblings. All birds were federally banded except for one (which was too small) so they could be identified in the future.

Sarah Karls is the Wildlife Rehabilitation Coordinator at DCHS's Wildlife Center.