Thursday, March 28, 2024

Wild Side

Wild Side: Insects of water and air

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I’ve been thinking a lot lately about a gaping void in my natural history knowledge: the biology and ecology of insects that have aquatic larval states. This is a huge group of species, functionally...

Wild Side: The osprey cometh

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It’s hard to think of a species more beloved among Vineyarders than the osprey. This long-winged, black-and-white bird was, like many other raptors, nearly exterminated in the 1950s and 1960s by indiscriminate insecticide use....

Wild Side: Brown thrashers have become rare here

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A recent report in a Vineyard birdwatching Facebook group called to mind a species I hardly ever think of these days: the brown thrasher. It’s not that I don’t like them; indeed, thrashers rank...

Wild Side: Reconsider ducks

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The late, great Vern Laux, perhaps the best birder ever to trespass his way across the Vineyard, had little patience with ducks. Oh, he’d add them to the day’s checklist. But if a distant...

Wild Side: Shoreline bugs

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I’ve been thinking a lot about shorelines lately, and the complex mix of challenges and opportunities that the meeting of land and water poses for wildlife. An oceanic shoreline, especially, with its high salinity,...

Wild Side: Savannah sparrows

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Across its vast geographical range, Savannah sparrows show a remarkable range of variation in features such as bill size, coloration, and preferred habitat. About 28 subspecies of Savannah sparrow have been described; a few,...

Wild Side: Titmice are fun to watch

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As our excellent planet wraps up another orbit around its star, most naturalists probably reflect a bit on their activity over the past 12 months. In my case, this includes hundreds of hours in...

Wild Side: Dovekies may show up

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Since it seems to be impossible to write about alcids — that is, the auks — without mentioning footballs, I’ll get it over with. These seabirds, often described as the Arctic’s ecological equivalent of...

Wild Side: Odd ducks

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If you’re fond of odd-looking birds, you’re in luck! Late fall is prime time for viewing American coots on Martha’s Vineyard. A member of the same taxonomic family as rails, the coot is one...

Wild Side: The 3D chess of a Cooper’s hawk

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This past weekend, as I was doing some final fall chores in our Oak Bluffs yard, I noticed an elongated blob high in a huge catalpa tree across the street from our house. Without...

Wild Side: The yellow-rumped warbler

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Last Saturday, Oct. 28, saw a flurry of activity around the parking loop at the Gay Head Cliffs in Aquinnah. Some of the activity was human: A field trip run by the Martha’s Vineyard...

Wild Side: Chipping sparrows

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October is sparrow season on the Vineyard, and indeed throughout southern New England. This is the month when all the sparrow species that occur here regularly can be found, and when the odds are...

Wild Side: Seaside goldenrod

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This past weekend, I focused my fieldwork on one of my favorite plants: seaside goldenrod, Solidago sempervirens. The common name accurately sums up the habitat preference of this important wildflower: It’s primarily a plant...

Wild Side: Birds from Lee

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Vineyard birders have a love-hate relationship with tropical storms. Like anybody else, we respect the enormous power of these systems, and dread the damage a direct hit by a strong storm invariably produces. On...

Wild Side: Sense of direction

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September is the peak of migration, not just for birds but for bats, butterflies, and dragonflies as well. We tend to think of fall migration as mainly a southward movement, and that makes sense....

Wild Side: It’s just a little crush

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Most of the time, I’m an equal-opportunity naturalist: Everything I see holds the same interest for me, and everything seems uniquely beautiful. But every so often, this egalitarian outlook breaks down, and some particular...

Wild Side: The seasons are turning for birds

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In nature, as in anything else, arrivals and beginnings are relatively easy to spot. One day in early spring, birds appear that weren’t there the day before, and you know that spring migration has...

Wild Side: The driveway is prime real estate

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If you were asked to describe good pollinator habitat, you’d probably come up with something like a wildflower meadow or a pollinator garden: green, flowery, lush, and diverse. You wouldn’t be wrong; pollinators do...

Wild Side: Tree crickets

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Members of the insect order Orthoptera — grasshoppers, crickets, and katydids — can be found year-round on Martha’s Vineyard (immatures of a few species overwinter, and can be found on mild winter days). But...

Wild Side: Sheep laurel and its lonely fan

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Across much of the Vineyard, on sandy soils both moist and dry, the most obvious late spring flowers may be those of sheep laurel, Kalmia angustifolia. Patchily distributed but locally abundant, this low shrub...