Nature Blog

Remembering VINS’ Recent Past

What do you like about working at VINS that has kept you here for so many years? LC: I love the people that I work with. I think we’re a good team, and we’re accepting of everyone’s new ideas. I also love working with the public and listening to their stories, especially during our private…

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VINS & Landmark College Collaboration Reflection

Landmark students set out to uncover the mystery of how many sex chromosomes individual birds contain in their cells and ultimately, run gel electrophoresis to determine the sex of some of VINS Raptor Ambassadors.

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2021 Rehabilitation Success Stories

Rehabilitation staff. Consider making a donation to VINS on Giving Tuesday (November 30, 2021) to support the care of injured and orphaned wild birds.

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Weybridge Osprey

VINS Staff is excited to announce the successful renesting and fledging of an injured nestling osprey that came to VINS after being found on the ground post nest destruction from a storm.

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Center for Wild Bird Rehab -Looking Back on 2020

VINS Center for Wild Bird Rehabilitation has experienced its busiest year yet, receiving a total of 1,025 patients.

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2019 at the Center for Wild Bird Rehabilitation

It has certainly been a busy year! Many may remember that our intake total was a record-breaking 652 patients in 2018. But move over, 2018 – the VINS Center for Wild Bird Rehabilitation received 705 total patients in 2019.

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Songbird Diseases & Bird Feeders: What To Look For

Bird feeding is a popular and enjoyable winter pastime for many people, bringing birds in close for easy viewing. While it is widely practiced and can even help biologists monitor populations through programs such as Project FeederWatch, there are some potential negative side effects of feeding birds.

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Ogden’s Egg

It’s been a hectic spring at VINS. The Center for Wild Bird Rehabilitation’s ongoing renovations meant we have had to move some of our education birds from their accustomed aviaries to other enclosures temporarily. Change can be stressful, so we were closely monitoring the behavior of our oldest, most “entrenched” resident, a 38-year-old Turkey Vulture named Ogden.

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Erie the Northern Harrier

VINS is excited to announce our newest raptor ambassador, “Erie,” a female Northern Harrier! Erie can be found on exhibit with our male harrier, “Freedom”.  They are quite the pair and provide a great opportunity to see how strikingly different male and female harriers are from one another, as one of the few raptors with different plumages between the genders.

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Don’t Feed That Owl!

by Bren LundborgWildlife Keeper In the midst of an early March snowstorm, we received yet another bird that many of you have probably been seeing in high numbers: a Barred Owl. While they are normally a common patient of ours, this winter we have been receiving greater numbers than usual coming in for treatment (as…

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