How Different is Different Enough?
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…
A Chorus of Songbirds: A Birdsong App for Everyone
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…
Meet Peter our new Wildlife Keeper
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…
Nest Watch Update – July 2016
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.…
Remembering Burlington, An Owl Ambassador
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…
Project NestWatch Update: June 2016
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…
Baby Bird Season Begins at VINS with lots of Barred Owlets
By Jordan DaleyScience Outreach Coordinator Did you know that Barred Owls are Vermont’s most common owl? They inhabit our old forests and wetland areas. They love large dark trees with cavities and plenty of prey around. These silent flyers will sneak up on anything they can get their talons on, from rodents to crayfish. They are…
National Poetry Month: Wild Words from a VINS Fan
By Jordan DaleyScience Outreach Coordinator April is National Poetry Month and VINS staff, volunteers and fans are celebrating! We recently received a letter from Gabby Baker, a 4th grader who loves VINS. She included a poem that she composed for her fourth grade class. Miss Baker’s poem got me thinking. Poetry has long been the…
It Takes a Village to Heal an Owl
By Lauren Adams, Lead Wildlife KeeperAnd Jordan Daley, Science Outreach Coordinator On January 16th the Center for Wild Bird Rehabilitation admitted our 6th patient of 2016. BDOW 16-006 is a very lucky Barred Owl. Some kind individuals rescued her after a collision with a vehicle in Thetford, VT on the evening of January 15th. Ted…
Minnesota, A Truly Great Gray Owl ~1993-2016
By Lauren Adams, Lead Wildlife Keeperand Jordan Daley, Science Outreach CoordinatorOn Monday, March 7, we lost a very special member of our VINS family, our female Great Gray Owl, Minnesota. She was a magnificent bird, both a staff and visitor favorite, and she will be greatly missed. In November of 1993, she was admitted as a…
