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It's chimney swift season at the Wildlife Center of Virginia

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It's chimney swift season at the Wildlife Center of Virginia


It’s early August, and at the Wildlife Center of Virginia you might say it’s chimney swift season. As homeowners take advantage of warm weather to clean their chimneys, dozens of baby birds fall or are removed from nests and brought in for care.

Chimney swifts have feet that are perfect for perching or building nests on vertical surfaces like rock crevices or hollow trees, so when humans began building homes with chimneys, swifts made the switch — according to Connor Gillespie at the Wildlife Center of Virginia.

“They find different sticks that they like,” Gillespie says. “They’ll bring them into that chimney and secrete a glue-like substance from under the tongue and adhere those sticks to the side of a chimney.”

There they create colonies.

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“Huge colonies, beautiful colonies, very loud colonies,” says Alejandra Olvera, a rehabilitation supervisor at the center.

“They’re kind of like the last baby birds we see in our season. They start fletching out of chimneys because people are cleaning their chimney or attics – doing renovations over the summer and they find all [these] babies.”

At first, employees feed the birds a nutritious mix of high protein kitten chow, vitamins and minerals. Later they get tiny worms or crickets, and when they’re ready, staffer Mac Stewart says they’re freed in areas near other chimney swift colonies.

“Once they show us that they’re able to fly around their enclosure, they’re eating on their own on the wing, their feathers are in good condition and waterproof, we can release them,” Stewart says. “And they’ll do just fine.”

This work is especially important because – in the age of central heating – fewer homes and businesses have chimneys, so swift populations are in decline.

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Virginia

Gov. Spanberger leads Virginia public safety readiness briefing

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Gov. Spanberger leads Virginia public safety readiness briefing


RICHMOND, Va. — Virginia Gov. Abigail Spanberger met with public safety leaders from across the commonwealth Monday as part of a “unified readiness” coordination effort.

The governor met with police and fire chiefs, sheriffs, emergency managers and private sector members — including Dominion Energy — to discuss Virginia’s commitment to public safety, intelligence sharing and interagency collaboration.

“As global tensions continue to evolve, I want to be very clear: there are no known threats specific to Virginia at this time,” Spanberger said. “Today’s briefing was about making sure that information can be shared quickly and we remain at the ready.”

The meeting relates to Spanberger’s Executive Order 12, which she says reaffirms Virginia’s commitment to public safety, community trust, and readiness.

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Opinion | Virginia Giuffre’s brothers join protest outside Epstein’s former New Mexico ranch

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Opinion | Virginia Giuffre’s brothers join protest outside Epstein’s former New Mexico ranch


The brothers of the late Jeffrey Epstein accuser Virginia Giuffre joined demonstrators outside Epstein’s former ranch in New Mexico on Sunday to demand more transparency. 

The protest, pegged to International Women’s Day, was attended by what the Santa Fe New Mexican estimated to be hundreds of demonstrators, including activists and lawmakers, outside the estate formerly known as Zorro Ranch.

Sky Roberts said it was the first time he had visited the ranch, and demonstrators’ presence was important as a show of “force” that they’re not “going away,” as some people, including the president, try to direct attention away from the Epstein scandal. During his remarks, he rebuked the government for what he called a cover-up and demanded the Justice Department release documents that show who visited the ranch, among other things.

“All those names are in the files, and right now the government is covering those up,” he said, according to Reuters.

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Epstein reportedly talked about using the ranch (now owned by Don Huffines, the GOP candidate for Texas state comptroller) for a eugenics-inspired plan to impregnate several women to “seed” the human race with his DNA (there’s no evidence he carried out such a plan). Giuffre’s posthumously released memoir includes allegations about meeting politicians and CEOs at Zorro Ranch, which was also recently linked to an unverified claim in the Epstein files alleging the deceased sex criminal had the bodies of two women buried near the property. After that allegation surfaced among the recently released Epstein files, New Mexico’s state legislature formed a truth commission to investigate Epstein’s activities at the ranch; the state DOJ has opened a probe of its own.



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Brothers of Epstein accuser Virginia Giuffre visit New Mexico ranch, demand unredacted documents

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Brothers of Epstein accuser Virginia Giuffre visit New Mexico ranch, demand unredacted documents


Two brothers of one of Jeffrey Epstein’s most prominent accusers visited the sex offender’s former New Mexico ranch on Sunday for ​the first time to demand the Trump administration release unredacted documents to reveal ‌the identities of men their late sister alleged sexually abused her at the property.



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