Posts by jbird24

By Lauren Adams, Lead Wildlife Keeper Ah, winter.  The “quiet” season in wildlife rehabilitation.  Around here, we call it Barred Owl season.  When the cold air creeps in, the mornings are frosty, and nighttime descends in mid-afternoon, this is when New England is up against its toughest test.  Barred Owls, unlike many birds that populate our skies…

By Lauren Adams,Lead Wildlife Keeper You can hear him even before you get inside the building.  Each day he greets us with the characteristic “Hoothoot Hoot Hoot.”  “Good morning, Utah,” we reply going about our daily tasks.  It is easy to take for granted a friendly conversation with one of the most fearsome predators of…

By Peter GauWildlife Keeper VINS is abuzz with exciting news from the Center for Wild Bird Rehabilitation. With the intake of patient #491 we’re only 9 birds away from treating 500 injured or orphaned wild birds in 2016! We haven’t been so close to this milestone in a few years- this is a big deal!…

By Lauren AdamsLead Wildlife Keeper “Northfield” arrived at VINS on June 26th this year as a nestling hawk. She was found in Northfield Vermont,lying in the middle of the road with her wing drooped out to the side. A passerby recognized that the small broad-winged hawk needed help; she was possibly injured and definitely too young to fend for…

By Jordan DaleyScience Outreach Coordinator Photo by Michael Butler Brown At first, I jumped for joy when I read this NY Times Science article the other day: A Quadruple Take on the Giraffe: There are four species, not one? It’s fascinating! It’s exciting! It sounds great: new species! Then I did my own double take, asking what…

By Jordan DaleyScience Outreach Coordinator Full Disclosure: I’m not a birder. Though I guess you could say that I’m becoming one. When I started working at VINS a little over a year ago, my exposure to the birding world was limited to one good friend, who co-piloted a road trip with me that followed the…

By Peter Gau, Wildlife Keeper I have always loved animals. In college I studied animal rehabilitation. Since then, I’ve held many animal related jobs, working with exotic, domestic animals and wild/native animals. Animals are my passion and luckily they’re also my job. I had been out of the wildlife rehabilitation field for about a year and…

By Anna AutilioEnvironmental Educator The nestboxes are empty again as the breeding season passes us faster than a Tree Swallow can fly! While monitoring our boxes for Project NestWatch, we here at VINS were lucky enough to see 7 Tree Swallow families and 1 House Wren family raise between 1 and 6 young birds each.…

By Jordan Daley, Science Outreach Coordinator Last week VINS lost a treasured animal ambassador and member of our VINS family. Burlington, a resident Great Horned Owl passed away after ten years of greeting and inspiring visitors to the Nature Center. Burlington came to VINS in June of 2006, well into his adult years. He was…

By Anna Autilio   Environmental Educator  Baby bird season is well underway all over Vermont, and here at VINS we are monitoring the 16 nestboxes on our campus for Project NestWatch. This citizen science program, run by the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, aims to monitor the status and trends in bird reproductive biology, including when nesting…