where natural history meets art
The school year has started, but that isn’t slowing us down up on Sherman Hollow Road. Check out the fall programs at the Birds of Vermont Museum, sign up for one if you like, or just drop by. We’re open Wednesday – Sunday, 10-4, until Halloween. We’re open by appointment other days and after. The trails are open sunrise to sunset, every day. Libraries have passes, and admission is always free for members (https://birdsofvermont.org/membership/).
We look forward to seeing you!
The most relaxed birding around. And around and around …
How many birds (and birdwatchers) can we identify from a 17-foot diameter circle between sunrise and sunset? Can we beat last year’s record? We’ve seen birds big and small, in night and day: from Kinglets to Great Blue Herons, Barred Owls to Turkey Vultures.
This is a great long-running community science project. Pledges and donations welcome:
We are observing from Dawn to Dusk. The Museum is open from 10am – 4pm.
Call or email to ask about joining the observation team.
For much more info, see https://www.thebigsit.org/ .
Check out the reports from previous years: 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021 (overall), 2021 (ours), 2022 (overall), 2022 (ours)
The Birds of Vermont Museum is hosting the fourth annual Race Around Birds trail run! There are two options for runners (and walkers), and you can even do both:
Race Day run: Saturday, November 4th, at 10a.m. This is a typical trail run, and a bit longer than 5k. We can welcome up to 50 runners. (Please carpool)
On-Your-Own (Virtual) Race: choose a day between October 21st and November 3rd, and record your time on the paper forms (available at the Museum’s front door).
Race results will be posted in our blog.
While registering is free, we encourage donations to support the museum, as well as cover the cost of trail work, post-race snacks and water, and possible swag. You may register for Race Day (group race), Virtual (self-timed) race, or both.
Registration open:
Read more below: ↓
This is a trail race with some steep uphill climbs. Some segments are more like single-track mountain trails. This is a HARD course.
The course is approximately 3.6 miles. The course winds around and crosses itself, making a slightly tangled figure 8 (using the trails on both sides of Sherman Hollow Road). There will be signs and maps.
The course is well-marked and you will return past the Museum to complete both loops. There are no supplies and no first aid stations on the course. Bathrooms and water are available when the Museum is open (Wednesdays through Sundays, 10am – 4pm, in October only).
The Race Map is available online: https://birdsofvermont.org/docs/trail-map-for-race-web.pdf . 
You may run or walk the course.
On the November 4th Race Day, racers will start at 10 a.m.
For the On-Your-Own (Virtual) Race, runners and walkers may come to the Museum at any time from daylight to dusk from October 21 to November 3. No dogs and no nights. You may run (or walk) the course multiple times on different days, in order to improve your times. You may run in groups, but the trail is generally single-file.
For the virtual option, you will keep track of your own start and finish times. Time-keeping forms will be in a marked box to the left of the Museum’s front door. Fill out a form for each day you race. Then, when you’re ready to run, take a map (if you need it), get to the start line (the west end of the parking lot by the parking sign), mark your starting time, and GO! Afterward, fill in your finish time and drop it in the box.
Please note: virtual runner results are not official, but like all results, will be reports in our results post on our blog.
If you are running on Race Day, please carpool. We have limited parking.
If you share photos or comments online, we encourage you to use these hashtags:
#RaceAroundBirds #RaceAroundBirds2023 #BirdsOfVermontMuseum #RunningIsForTheBirds #TrailRace #VirtualRace #HuntingtonVt #TrailRunning #TrailRunner
Send questions to trailrunning@birdsofvermont.org!
Printable race packets (trail map, course notes, entry form, waiver) are available as PDFs (see below):
Prior years’ results are at https://birdsofvermont.org/tag/results/
It’s the end of 2022, and a pretty good year it’s been. We hope the same is true for you.
Thank you for following us, supporting us, and being part of the museum community.
Enjoy the brief list of this month’s birds, consider donating to our annual appeal, and keep on birding!
Happy New Year!
Welcome to the first month of our by-appointment season! It’s sometimes extra quiet around here as we work to catch up on reports, projects, and prepare for our annual appeal.
And Feederwatch began! We have some volunteers who are wonderfully dedicated to helping the Museum participate in this community science program, so thank you Michele, Megan and Debbie!
October is glorious! We started the month with the Dead Creek Wildlife festival, continued birding during the Big Sit!, admired pollinators on fall flowers like asters, explored and documented plants for the phenology project, and welcomed campers visiting through the Harvest Host program. We spent some time working on the Retreat, which we hope to open to overnighters sometime in the next year.
Of course, we have to sit down by the Viewing Window and just watch birds to recover from all of this.
As the risk of avian flu declined, we looked at the information out from Vermont Fish & Wildlife and Cornell Lab of Ornithology. We had been using the hummingbird feeders (they’re so territorial!); then we put out just the cylinder feeder late this month. Right away some of our “usual suspects” were at it!
December has those short days, but there is still time to see birds. You can go outside, or sit at a window, or peek around a tree…
It seems like it would be a good month for turkeys, but somehow we didn’t see them…
October is one of our favorite months. It’s not that there’s a larger diversity of birds (that’s June), but it’s the month with the Big Sit! For us that means birders, friends (some of course are both!), birding, relaxing, bird-friendly coffee, conversation, and probably too many cider doughnuts.
Continue reading “Through the Window: October 2021 (and Big Sit)”
