Posts by jbird24
A Soaring Start to Baby Bird Season
We’re about six weeks into baby bird season at the Center for Wild Bird Rehabilitation and Ambassador Care. Although the season got off to a slow start at first, our intakes jumped precipitously in the last few weeks. With over 100 intakes in the last week of May and more than 260 in June alone,…
Read MoreWildlife Storytelling
By Anna Morris, Director, Wildlife Ambassador Programs One of my favorite aspects of our live animal ambassador programs at VINS is the unexpected opportunity to educate through storytelling. While we highlight the interconnectedness of nature and the incredible adaptations of wildlife, we also share the personal stories of the animals we meet and the humans…
Read MoreFarr Cross Returns
Insights from the Rough-legged Hawk Project Farr Cross, a Rough-legged Hawk we’re tracking with the Rough-legged Hawk Project, has returned to Vermont for the winter! This season, he’s been frequenting an area northwest of Middlebury. Outfitted with a GPS transmitter in winter 2022, Farr Cross has successfully migrated to and from the Arctic multiple times,…
Read MoreExploring Vermont’s Wildlife: Field Research Updates
Trout in the Classroom: Raising Brook Trout VINS recently received approximately 100 Brook Trout eggs from the Roxbury Fish Culture Station, continuing our commitment to the Trout in the Classroom (TIC) program. This environmental education initiative allows students to raise brook trout from eggs, ultimately releasing them into state-approved streams. We’re proud to collaborate with…
Read MoreA World of Wonder: Early Childhood Wetlands Exhibit
Giggles of joy, squeals of excitement, oohs and ahhs of wonder. These are just a few of the sounds we expect to hear emanating from the upcoming Early Childhood Exhibit at the VINS Nature Center. This winter, we will open a new space dedicated to young audiences. The VINS Staff have been hard at work…
Read MoreBroad-winged Hawks: Tracking a Migratory Journey
If you have felt a recent change in the air and are starting to get excited for fall, you may just be a Broad-winged Hawk. Okay, maybe broad-wings don’t get excited about fall, but they do experience Zugunruhe, which is German for migratory restless period. September is not just the start of pumpkin spice everything…
Read MoreVINS Research Updates
by Jim Armbruster, Lead, Center for Field Research Some exciting updates from the research world! July 2024 Broad-winged Hawk Monitoring The VINS Field Research team, in collaboration with Hawk Mountain’s Broad-winged Hawk Project, recently deployed a second transmitter on a Vermont Broad-winged Hawk. “Billings” was encountered at Marsh Billings Rockefeller National Historical Park in Woodstock,…
Read MoreNest Box Monitoring
by Jim Armbruster, Lead, Center for Field Research The VINS Research team have 13 successful American Kestrel nest boxes this year that we have been monitoring: 2 of which were already successful with all 5 eggs hatching; 3 of the nests were successful with 4 egg hatches, and the remaining boxes are still being monitored…
Read MoreRemarkable Reptiles – A New Exhibit
By Chris Collier, Senior Director, Operations & Exhibits VINS new exhibit – Scales and Shells: Remarkable Reptiles – is in a new location (next to the Birds Are Dinosaurs exhibit in the Neale Pavilion), which provides our reptile ambassadors much larger, updated, bioactive enclosures. While most well-known for our avian ambassadors, VINS is currently home…
Read MoreLocating Broad-winged Hawk Nesting Sites
by Jim Armbruster, Lead, Center for Field Research This summer VINS will be focusing on locating Broad-winged Hawk (BWHA) nesting sites with the hopes to trap and band at least six of them with GPS trackers like we did with Ottuaquechee, a female BWHA. There is little known about BWHA’s and our efforts will help…
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