Tahoe Institute for Natural Science

06/05/2026

June is perhaps the most vibrant month for nature enthusiasts! With the arrival of summer, we have many events this month, including bird walks, wildflower hikes, and immersive camps for both kids and adult naturalists. Join us for the Lake Tahoe Bird Festival on June 13th, and participate in the California Bird Breeding Atlas project all summer long. Get involved in our community conservation efforts!

https://conta.cc/4g3CU9l

Email from Tahoe Institute for Natural Science Get Involved This Summer! Check out Our Camps and Events. June | Update | 2026 Calendar TINS 15 Year Anniversary Donate June 2026 Update ...and just lik

05/31/2026

TINS' Executive Director, Will, has been mist-netting and banding birds since the early 1990s, having banded tens of thousands of individual birds as part of various research projects. Will has continued to monitor Tahoe's bird populations through banding for TINS, having captured, processed, and banded over 7000 birds to date. Many of these birds have been witnessed by school field trips. However, this research has never had any dedicated funding prior to this year. TINS just does this as part of our core programing, but it can be challenging to dedicate the time and energy this research needs for consistency. If you would like to support our banding research and ensure that both our mist-netting monitoring efforts and banding field trips can continue, please consider adding to the $5100 raised this last year, by sponsoring it as one of our 15th Anniversary projects: https://www.tinsweb.org/15-year-anniversary

05/27/2026

Help us spread the word! The Village Green Bird Walk on 5/28 is cancelled due to weather. We will see you next week for the last Village Green Walk of the season!

05/20/2026

Bzzzzttt!! This sleepy Van Dyke's Bumblebee (Bombus vandykei) is here to remind you that the first Bee-o-Blitz of the summer is under way, happening this week through Memorial Day Weekend. Post photos of any bees within the state of California to iNaturalist, and they will contribute to this citizen science project. For tips on how to photograph bees for ID and upload them to the project, the California Bee Atlas folks hosted this webinar last week: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oAobUk_Kw14

More bee events ahead - a pollinator talk at the El Dorado County Library in S. Lake next Tuesday 26 May, a June Bee-o-Blitz will be happening 22-28 June (including a native bee walk on the 24th), and save the date as well for the annual Sagehen Bioblitz on July 11th!
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05/05/2026

May brings vibrant blooms and lots of events!

TONIGHT (5/5) - pollinator talk at TERC in Incline Village

Tomorrow (5/6) - bird talk at the Villager Nursery in Truckee

Thursday (5/7) - our first weekly Village Green bird walk in Incline

Click through to read our May email blast with these and many other outings and opportunities. Get involved in nature!
https://conta.cc/3RmM5av

Email from Tahoe Institute for Natural Science May | Update | 2026 Calendar TINS 15 Year Anniversary Donate May 2026 Update While the recent weather seems to be fighting the inevitable, May brings a n

04/29/2026

Today we are thinking about pollinators, and we have a lot of upcoming pollinator-related events for you to mark on your calendars!!!

April 30th - Pollinator Talk at the Villager Nursery in Truckee (TOMORROW!!!)
May 5th - Pollinator Talk at TERC in Incline Village
May 16-24 - Bee-O-Blitz on iNaturalist
May 26 - Pollinator Talk at the El Dorado County Library in South Lake Tahoe
June 22-28 - Montane Bee-O-Blitz on iNaturalist
June 24 - Intro to Native Bees Walk (location TBD, but likely Page Meadows)
July 12 - Annual Butterfly Count in South Lake Tahoe: https://www.tinsweb.org/butterfly-counts-2

More information about each of these events can be found on the TINS calendar on our website - tinsweb.org

04/25/2026

As we wrap up Volunteer Appreciation Week, we want to say thank you to all of our amazing volunteers!

We’re so grateful for this incredible community that helps us advance our mission. Whether you lead outings, help with fundraising events, participate in one of our citizen science projects, serve on the board, or support our education programs, we want to thank you.

Interested in joining us? We’re hosting a virtual volunteer orientation on Thursday, April 30, from 6:00–7:30 PM. It’s a great chance to learn more about what we do, meet others in the community, and find the volunteer role that’s right for you.

Fill out the volunteer interest form to learn more: https://www.tinsweb.org/volunteer

04/22/2026

Did you know that dragonflies have been patrolling Earth’s wetlands for over 300 million years? That’s long before dinosaurs! Today, on Earth Day, we’re celebrating these aerial acrobats (Order: Odonata). Did you know that .....they have a 95% success rate in catching prey mid-air?..a single dragonfly can consume hundreds of mosquitoes a day?..because their larvae (nymphs) live in water for months to years, their presence or absence is extremely useful for monitoring water quality?..TINS hosts an annual odonate mini-blitz where we try to find, photograph, and learn about as many dragonflies and damselflies as we can for a day?

All true, and for this year's "dragonfly day" we will be returning to the site of our 2021 rediscovery of Spiny Baskettail, a species that had been missing from the region for 107 years! To learn more about our annual Odonate Mini-blitz, visit our site, here: https://www.tinsweb.org/odonates

Happy Earth Day, and let’s protect our wetlands and other aquatic habitats to keep these prehistoric, important "living water quality tests" flying!

04/16/2026

Nature is always shifting, changing, and surprising us. With new species being spotted, scientific names evolving, and seasonal patterns changing, it’s time for an update to keep the Tahoe Bird Checklist to keep it as accurate and useful as possible for our community.

This a big effort, so we are highlighting it as part of our 15th Anniversary Signature Projects, and we’re inviting individuals and businesses to sponsor the endeavor.

As usual, we’ll be giving away our checklists at our booth during Earth Day this week and next (4/18 at LTCC and 4/25 at Palisades), so stop by to pick one up, learn more, and say hello!

We are also still looking for VOLUNTEERS to help staff the booth and connect with the community. Visit our website (www.tinsweb.org) to learn more about all of these opportunities, and we hope to see you at one of our upcoming Earth Day events!

04/07/2026

Lack of winter snow has different impacts for different aspects of the region's ecology, but for our five species that turn white (two hares, two weasels, and a ptarmigan), it means they have been sticking out like sore thumb this season! This is known as a phenology mismatch, when the timing of natural life events (e.g. changing coat color) no longer matches the timing of environmental conditions (e.g. when the snow actually falls or melts).

At Tahoe, Snowshoe Hares and White-tailed Jackrabbits rely on turning white for the winter to camouflage from predators, but as winters grow warmer and snow arrives later, these hares are finding themselves white while the landscape is green and brown. This makes them incredibly easy targets for predators, with research from Scott Mills' lab at the University of Montana showing a 7% decrease in weekly survival when a mismatch occurs.

To learn more about TINS' research on rabbits and hares in the Sierra Nevada and how you can support it directly, click here: https://www.tinsweb.org/montane-rabbits