If a door gets left open here for any length of time it summons the elusive but impressive garage peacock.

Celebrating Superb Owls day, here are some of our burrowing owls being particualrly superb! Training isn't just tricks; medical behaviors like learning voluntary nail trims here mean not having to catch and restrain birds, much less stress for people and birds alike. #SuperbOwl

New hay bales means every silly yak plays king of the hill. (Momo here is half yak, half highland cow. Her mom, Appa, is pictured below).

For anyone else who might need a little timeline break today, here's Bluey the very soggy blue jay thoroughly enjoying a bath 🪶

Minnesota, my home, is carrying a heavy burden right now. Being kind is not being weak. The strength to care for others, to love and protect our neighbors, to be a shield and not a sword, to be warmth in the cold is true Minnesota nice. (Photo by local photographer Ricky Roman, MN)

Just received my new pins from Foxloft @foxfeather.bsky.social !!! They're so amazingly pretty omg even the box is beautiful

To be a mini donkey in a warm jacket on a cold day.

Hey, @foxfeather.bsky.social, I got shinies! They are so pretty.

On nice days during this deep winter time, the vultures get short jaunts outside to enjoy the sun and snow. Yolo the king vulture has a lot of fun exploring this bizarre winter world, then enjoys foot and face warming as soon as he returns inside. #lovevultures

Pretty boy BB-8 showing off his luxurious feather boa. It never ceases to amaze me how well that emus can adapt to winter!

Windows make all our buildings into human aquariums for the birds. They love to peep in and watch us work, it seems very entertaining for them.

So much treasure! Thankyou @foxfeather.bsky.social

I love seeing people getting their new pins! I'm so happy with how this entire batch turned out. Many were more detailed than any we've made before but I think they turned out extra beautiful :)

My box of treasures from @foxfeather.bsky.social latest Kickstarter came yesterday. I got two quail pins, already gave Paul one.

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!)