All the new Visionary Vultures pins have arrived and they're amazing! Shipping for campaign pledges is underway; I'm working to get them graded, assembled, packed, & out as quickly as possible. If you're waiting, look out for a tracking email soon! visionary-vultures-4.backerkit.com/hosted_preor...

Gauche sketch of @foxfeather.bsky.social’s baby king vulture, Yolo.

Yolo often stands with his little back toes crossed, which I find ridiculously cute! You can see vultures don't have bulky feet and talons built for grasping/carrying like other raptors. Their more chicken-like feet are meant for bracing on food to pull at it with their powerful beaks, instead.

The last few weeks I've been off chasing the world's largest owls (Blakiston's fish owl) in Hokkaido. These massive, muppety, eagle-sized owls spend their nights hunting fish in shallow streams in the Russian far east/China/Northern Japan.

Hola from Costa Rica! I am here for a work trip and the Raptor Research Foundation conference. We've seen nine king vultures so far, it has been absolutely incredible! 🪶

Nearly 90 degrees in Minnesota in October is crazy. Even the vultures have melted spectacularly in this weather. 🪶

They grow up so fast! Yolo has lost his floofy baby pantaloons and almost all his baby fluff now. It will take him about 4-5 years to get his full, bright, adult king vulture colors but he looks different almost every day! 🪶 #lovevultures

The next generation of peabirds is coming along nicely, tended to by diligent moms. 🪶 #overflowingwithpeacocks

Been out of town at a work conference for a week. It's hard to leave; dropped a nighthawk off at the big city rehab center literally on the way to the airport . As soon as I got home, this poor kid needed help. This young turkey vulture was hit by a car while trying to grab some roadkill breakfast.

I'm super excited to welcome and introduce our new Education Director, Sidney! Sidney brings with her a wealth of experience in managing birds of prey (and the people that work with them), and will be working with us over the next year to help grow and expand our education work.

It's been a very busy week! Almost all of our patients this week have been owls, mostly unfortunate victims of car strikes. You can help owls out by never throwing trash out of your car (even compostable things like apple cores) - these attract rodents, which attract their hunters to the road. 🪶

Hey! Did you know it's the best day of the year? International Vulture Day is here!! It's a day to celebrate, share & support vultures, the most endangered (and misunderstood) family of birds in the world. Take a moment to share a vulture with someone just how cool and important they are! #ivad2025

Burrowing owl clean-up crew, hard at work.

Got to meet some mini donkeys this weekend at a local farm, they are delightful!

Be careful not to leave your owls in the sun, they have a very low melting point. 🪶

Baby!

If your day might benefit from the quiet zen of bearded reedlings incubating eggs, we have a nest cam running! Come join us at: www.twitch.tv/thefoxloft #birds #livestream 🪶

Dad on duty! Our bearded reedlings laid their first eggs, which is super exciting! Both male and female reedlings share incubation duties, but Okolo here seems to want the job most. He's almost always on the nest when I check. 🪶

In case your day needs a quiet minute of happy geese being happy 🪶

It's been a very busy time of year for rescuing young birds finding themselves in spots of trouble. Even though this red-tailed hawk looks fully grown, she's likely only about three months old. Birds grow up super fast; young hawks like this start to fly at around only 40 days old.

New stickers from the Visionary Vultures project have arrived & sticker-only orders have started shipping! Pins are in progress and will start getting samples of those soon, so exciting! If you missed the campaign, pre-orders are available now visionary-vultures-4.backerkit.com/hosted_preor...

Please enjoy the intense, glorious nobility of a baby vulture learning to fly 🪶

Xena is a very serious dog. Gosh, they grow up so fast!! #gshep #judgeydogs

Baby bath pants! 🪶 Yolo the king vulture, testing out the hose spray for a shower. 🚿 He wasn't quite sure about it at first, but decided he likes it!

Brave boy! Yolo the baby king vulture is very curious and has been enjoying exploring our ambassador building and aviaries. He's just started to fly, but using ramps is a lot of fun too. 🪶

The cutest tiny rounds! (Okolo and Cirka, bearded reedlings). 🪶

Wild Tuvu Chase The past few days we've been trying to rescue this downed vulture (broken wing). It's is in a large, heavily wooded/brushy area and manages to thoroughly disappear after we get alerted of a sighting. Hopefully trapping attempts will work!

Our ambassador birds learn to step onto a scale so we can monitor their daily weights, as part of their health care. Some more cautious birds can take considerable time to get comfortable with it, but some jump right up onto the scale the first time they're asked, like this little rock star! 🪶

Sweetest baby pterodactyl! 🪶

Yami and Mokushi were taken from the wild (illegally) by people as babies, so they never learned to speak 'raven'. Like people, ravens learn their language during critical 'childhood' periods. Without raven parents, they learned to mimic what was around - people, and in this case, American crows. 🪶

Big wings and baby fluffy! #lovevultures 🪶

One of my favorite things about living rurally is getting to know all the local bird families. Every year the area red-tailed hawk pair fledges kids, and for a few weeks the youngsters hang around yelling constantly (despite having full crops) while the parents soar overhead.

Yaklets: Attitude +++

Zoom! Sev and Diva show off their giant wind sails. Despite being one of the smallest of vultures, yellow-headed vultures still have an impressive wingspan! 🪶

Cuteness overload: baby vulture edition! Important? ✅️ Nature's cleaning crew? ✅️ Smart as heck? ✅️ Adorable? ✅️ #lovevultures 🪶

This amazing, teeny tiny, squid-faced floof is a baby pygmy falcon. They hatch out looking far too relatable and like a big mood re: today's world (It looks like they don't have an account here yet to share, photo is from the San Antonio zoo!)

Wind-blown bloomers, emu edition! 🪶

New kid on the block! We are super excited to announce that a fourth vulture species has just joined our team; can you tell which one he is? 🪶

We usually don't know much about the individual wild turkey poults we get, since they come from the entire state, sent to us from larger wildlife rehab centers. This little one came to us with a story though, shared by finder Garrett Young. Thank you for finding help for this little life, Garrett!

Some itty bitty wild turkey orphans who had a rough start to life, but are now getting their first chance to forage and explore outdoors. They've joined a group of our older chicks, will hopefully recover from their early ordeal and get a second chance at wild life soon!

Its been way too hot here, but the vultures know how to keep cool!

It is so hot here that the owls have melted #burrowingowl 🪶

Daily watering of the emus, so that they grow big and strong. (I love when they shake off like wet dogs). 🪶

Little emulets are out with the adults now, and Zal is being the best dad. He's adopted them all (it's usually BB-8 that does!). Go Zal!

It's "Overflowing with baby crows" time of year, once again. #wildliferehab 🪶

The rain has been really nonstop here for awhile, so Sev and Diva are joining in the #soggyvultures club

Lady Minerva loves to go enjoy a summer rain shower! Vultures = Clean! They purify the environment by efficiently removing dangerous toxins (their digestive systems can neutralize anthrax, botulism, rabies, etc) and they spend a lot of time keeping clean themselves, too! 🪶 #soggyvultures

Look how cool this pendant from @foxfeather.bsky.social looks! I'd probably have gotten it anyway, but giving some support to a conservatory at the same time is actually the coolest thing.

Minerva turned 42 this year!🎉 Did you know that vultures are such long lived birds? Turkey vultures like Minerva can live into their 50s, and larger vultures like Andean Condors can make it into their 60s and 70s, possibly even older than that! 🪶

Misha's right wing was broken (and healed improperly) while he was a baby in the wild. It unfortunately keeps him from being able to fly (the reason he was placed with us), but he loves to stand in the window and 'soar' on windy days! (He can go outside too but the window is more fun, apparently) 🪶