After a bleak winter and the rain of the past week, spring is finally in bloom at Dartmouth. Bright smiles and sunshine light up every corner of campus. But with all the excitement of warmth, it is easy to neglect the unique opportunities that lie just beyond Hanover. While many students may endeavor to hike local trails, paddleboard on the Connecticut River or spikeball on the green, if you are looking to stare nature right in the face this spring while supporting local conservation efforts, I highly recommend visiting the array of avian exhibits featured at the Vermont Institute of Natural Science Nature Center.
After a busy Week 5 and seeing one too many of my home friends posting about their last days of classes, I needed to unplug and touch some grass — or rather, see some birds. My editor Noelle Blake ’26 and I wound down back roads to Quechee, Vt., where VINS sits on grassy hills. Once we had purchased our admission tickets, we began our journey across the Nature Center with a visitor map in hand.
Our first stop was the raptor exhibit, a series of enclosures housing 24 birds, according to Wildlife Keeper Spencer Bronk. All the birds in permanent residence at the Nature Center have sustained injuries, often from human contact, that inhibit their return to the wild. On the bright side, they get free food, housing and infinite admiration from human visitors. Entering the exhibit, I locked eyes with a pair of bald eagles, Wyoming and Minnesota, named after the states where they were rescued.
While I am familiar with the species, I had never observed them up close before. Wyoming and Minnesota were stoic and gorgeous; it makes sense that bald eagles are an emblem of patriotism. Among the eagles, I met VINS ambassadors — what the Nature Center calls their rescues — ranging from common ravens to red-tailed hawks, whose unmistakable caws, according to information plaques by their enclosure, are often stolen for bald eagle sound effects. As I reached the end of the exhibit, LaGuardia, VINS’s male snowy owl ambassador, rotated his head to glare at me, a hilarious farewell.
While appreciating each bird’s beauty at the raptor exhibit, a thought crossed my mind: this is a lot of birds to care for. As it turns out, tending to all the birds and accommodating their individual needs is no small feat. Bronk oversees the care for all raptors, songbirds and reptiles on the Nature Center’s property.
“A decent part of the day is preparing their food and delivering [it] to them, [then] cleaning their enclosures to make sure everything is nice and sanitary,” Bronk said.
In addition to feedings, he is responsible for enrichment programming that maintains the mental well-being of the birds.
“One of the big projects is… making sure that they have something novel every day so that they’re having new experiences and using their brains a little bit more than …if they had the same day-to-day,” Bronk said.
Because of the work of VINS employees and volunteers, the public can enjoy the various exhibits in a way that’s safe for both the animals and guests. Working closely for education and enrichment programming also benefits the relationships of caregivers and animals, like Bronk and Orange, a resident crow.
“[Orange] and I get along great,” Bronk said. “After I moved over to [the Wildlife Keeper] position, I sat in on one of the programs the education team was doing with Orange. [When] I walked into the back, he ran over to me and sat on the chair next to me.”
After leaving the raptor exhibit, we sat down in the outdoor theatre to watch a live bird demonstration. A VINS employee came out and greeted the audience. A red-tailed hawk Bloomfield was perched on the employee’s falconry glove. The employee explained Bloomfield’s reason for living at the Nature Center — permanent flight impairment — while highlighting her distinctive skills, namely her immense grip strength and impeccable eyesight. VINS hosts interactive events like this multiple times each day, including raptor feedings, tours of its facilities and live encounters with its ambassador animals.
While many of these events attract school field trips and younger audiences, VINS is open to all and hosts other special events to bring in groups from all demographics. Anna Morris, the Director of the Wildlife Ambassadors Programs, plays a part in this outreach, balancing fun and learning.
“Throughout the summer, there [are] about five or six major themed events that bring people to the nature center,” Morris said. “In June, for example, [we have] our Remarkable Reptile day. We [host the event] in June because this is often the time when turtles cross the road, so we want to educate people about why they do that and how to help them.”
Along with caring for the raptors and educating its guests, VINS has a secondary mission: to invest in the communities surrounding Quechee. This involvement stems from the founding of the Nature Center, which started as an initiative to clean the Ottauquechee River in 1970, according to Morris. Though VINS has since expanded its mission, it still strives to give back to the surrounding area, forging connections between wildlife and human communities.
“One thing that we’re trying to do is work more closely with the Ottauquechee water protectors, a group of Abenaki people and concerned citizens who are maintaining vigilance on the cleanliness of the Ottauquechee [River],” Morris said. “My colleagues and I are really interested in seeing [how] VINS can provide resources and assistance to those folks who have been doing [conservation efforts] as long as we have and longer.”
After seeing Bloomfield in action, we made our way over to the Songbird Aviary, a sunlit enclosure housing 29 unreleasable avian residents. The aviary immersed me in a serene soundscape. With doves resting on the ground, chickadees and waxwings chirping as they bounced between branches and one outspoken cardinal soaring along the walls of the enclosure, the aviary cleared out the noise of academic stress in my head and replaced it with cheerful trills.
We ended our day at the Nature Center at the blue jay exhibit. Though all of them had wing injuries that made flight challenging, the blue jays did not shy from hopping to the front of the enclosure to say “hi” — they acted like we were longtime friends, and I felt a deep affinity for them. I was reminded of this moment when talking to Morris about why accessibility to places like VINS is vital to the conservation movement.
“I hope that visitors come away with the idea that science, nature and animals are not just a thing that you go visit, but an inherent part of the landscape of the earth,” Morris said. “Nature is with us all the time, and the best thing we can do is relearn how to coexist with it.”