Friday, March 29, 2024
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Matt Pelikan

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Wild Side: The mysterious chimney swift

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After the robin, the chickadee, and the blue jay, the chimney swift may have been the first bird I learned to identify. I was...

Wild Side: A hard frost, late

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When it comes to weather, every year is unique, perhaps more so on Martha’s Vineyard than in most places. And so far, at least...

Wild Side: Spring orioles

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Spring songbird migration on Martha’s Vineyard is a highly variable phenomenon from year to year. Sometimes, about all that happens is that our breeding...

Wild Side: She’s a polyester bee

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How does a female solitary bee start her day? I’d never asked myself the question, but recently ended up with a chance to answer...

Wild Side: Bee season is here

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My first native bee of the season? Why, thank you for asking! It was a male Bradley’s mining bee, Andrena bradleyi, which I found...

Wild Side: Spring may look sparse

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As the first half of April arrives, Vineyarders can finally think of winter in the past tense. To be sure, we could still see...

Wild Side: It’s an ill wind

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Martha’s Vineyard is a great place for birding, with a high diversity of birds present at most times of the year, and a remarkable...

Wild Side: Townsend’s solitaire

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So far, 2023 has been a bit of a snoozer from the birdwatching perspective. Not much unusual has been reported, and at least in...

Wild Side: On the house fly

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“House fly.” I think we all get roughly the same image from that common name: a grayish fly, between a quarter- and a half-inch...

Wild Side: The hermit thrush

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One of the more gratifying aspects of birding is the way even familiar species find ways to surprise you. Common birds turn up in...

Wild Side: Red-bellied (Carolina) woodpecker

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In these days when so many bird species are beleaguered by habitat loss, climate change, disease, environmental toxins, competition from invasive species, or other...

Wild Side: CBC

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The 63rd annual Martha’s Vineyard Christmas Bird Count (CBC), held on the first day of the year, was in one respect the most enjoyable...

Wild Side: New World warblers

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The New World warblers — that’s the avian family Parulidae — features many of the most popular and attractive songbirds in the world. As...

Wild Side: Where are the butterflies hiding?

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As calendar years approach their ends, I always find myself reflecting back on what interesting species I found in the preceding months. But I...

Wild Side: Insects are still out there

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As November winds down, bugwatching likewise grows slow. All of the Island, by this point, has had at least one hard frost, killing many...

Wild Side: Aging naturalist

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As a kid, I had astonishing vision. I can remember standing in our driveway and seeing with perfect clarity a wrought-iron filigree on a...

Wild Side: Weird wasps

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As you will have gathered by now, there isn’t much about insects that doesn’t interest me. These animals, primitive by some measures but highly...

Wild Side: Survival of the fittest

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I write this column under the optimistic assumption that the Drought of 2022 is in the rear-view mirror. September and the first half of...

Wild Side: Sometimes no-kill insect studies don’t work

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A lifelong lover of wildlife of all kinds, I avoid killing anything. I brake for turkeys and squirrels; spiders, and stinkbugs, and crickets that...

Wild Side: Andrena nubecula

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Yellow is the signature color of Martha’s Vineyard in late September: goldenrod is blooming everywhere! These members of the aster family — somewhere around...