Aug 29, 2024 – Quechee, VT
Breakfast was at a Skinny Crepe located half a mile from the park. They even offered gluten free crepes! We then drove into West Lebanon to pick up a couple of travel journals Sandy had ordered from Amazon, shopped for a few groceries and got in a bit of retail therapy at a local thrift store.
We then headed to Lebanon and the entrance to the 58-mile multi-use Northern Rail Trail, a rail trail running from Lebanon to Boscawen. We picked it up at the southern end of town and rode south along the Mascoma River to the lake by the same name. It was an easy ride on packed cinder mix, gently uphill heading south and, of course, an easy, slightly downhill return.
In Quechee we’d driven past the entrance to the Center for Wild Bird Rehabilitation at VINS (Vermont Institute of Natural Science) and decided it would be an interesting place to visit. The name implies its primary mission which is to treat and rehabilitate injured wild birds and return them to the natural environment. They receive more than 1,000 birds annually.
Some of the birds cannot be returned to the wild, though, because of physical injuries or because they have been imprinted by humans, typically because they were held as a pet. Those birds are held in the facility. A few of them, as well as birds bred for the purpose, are trained as “ambassadors” to help with their education mission.
On arrival we were invited to observe a training session for an ambassador-to-be crow. The crow had been bred in captivity and was socialized to be comfortable around people. The staff was teaching it to learn to identify colors by saying the name of the colors of three small colored blocks. It was conducted like any other animal training session, getting it to associate a color with a block and rewarding it for each action. It was pretty neat to watch.
Next was a visit to the song bird aviary where multiple kinds of birds were kept in captivity. They’d all been treated at the facility but were not capable of surviving in the wild. Similarly, they have a collection of raptors that we watched while they were being fed.
A high point was a raptor demonstration where we learned about several birds. All the birds were trained to be comfortable on a trainer’s gloved hand. Two owls were brought out, a screech owl and a barn owl where we learned a bit about each breed. The screech owl was tiny and had coloring and shape such that, if it landed on a tree, you would be hard pressed to pick it out.
Similarly, they brought out a Harris’s hawk and a broad winged hawk. The broad winged hawk performed for us, flying from handler to handler close above the heads of the audience. It was startling how close to us they flew.
Finally we visited their canopy walk. One neat feature was that you entered it from the top of the hillside over which it ranged which made it accessible to wheelchairs. It was high, too, standing 60 feet above the forest floor. There were several feature places including a cool sculpture of a pair of eagles tending their nest and a large netted “nest” that people could climb through high above the ground. The third feature was a tower you could climb for a longer view. A 70 step stairway and a 27 step spiral led us to a platform some 120 feet above the forest floor. Nice view!
The institute was very well worth a visit.
Dinner was cod poached with salsa, cheese and chips with side of sautéed corn.