Thursday, March 28, 2024

Wild Side

Wild Side: The cicada that sang in the morning

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On Thursday, August 25, I met with high school science teacher Anna Cotton to discuss a natural history classroom project she’s developing. We briefly toured a likely site for the fieldwork portion of that...

Wild Side: Eastern tiger swallowtail

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This has, by and large, been a pitiful season for butterflies. As I wrote in my July 12 column, I believe butterfly numbers in general are in steady decline on the Vineyard, and in...

Wild Side: Leafcutter bees

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With more than 180 species in nearly 30 genera, the bee fauna of Martha’s Vineyard presents an amazing diversity of appearance, life history, and ecology. It also presents the observer with a wide range...

Wild Side: The Carolina grasshopper

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The Carolina grasshopper, Dissosteira carolina, ranks among the most common species of Orthoptera on Martha’s Vineyard, and also among the most easily found and recognized. With notable regularity, the first adults take wing around...

Wild Side: Where are the butterflies?

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Among the most common wildlife questions that I get these days runs about like this: “I’m hardly seeing any butterflies. Are their numbers down?” It’s a question to handle with care. A lot of factors...

Wild Side: Our Vineyard bioblitz

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For centuries at least, there has existed a tradition of amateur study of nature. During the 20th century, observing nature achieved real popularity as a hobby, first in the forms of birdwatching and botany,...

Wild Side: The Breeding Bird Survey

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For about 20 years now, I’ve spent one morning every June running the Vineyard’s Breeding Bird Survey (BBS) route. Coordinated by the U.S. Geological Survey, the BBS is a continent-wide, long-term monitoring program for...

Wild Side: Hitchhiking grasshoppers

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My friend Margaret Curtin is a top-shelf naturalist. I closely follow her posts to the “citizen science” platform iNaturalist.org, where she helps me and many others identify plants and where I’m no longer surprised...

Wild Side: Face to face with bees

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You probably think about bees from time to time. Their role as pollinators has come increasingly into the public eye in recent years, while apparent declines in bee numbers and diversity have focused public...

Wild Side: One for the books

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There is some really weird stuff out there. Take the insect order Strepsiptera, commonly known as “twisted-wing insects” because of the bizarre wing form shown by adult males. The front wings are knotted up into...

Wild Side: Eastern carpenter bees

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Pretty much everyone, I expect, has at least a nodding acquaintance with our large carpenter bees. Our sole species, Xylocopa virginica, the eastern carpenter bee, is a conspicuous beast, resembling a very large bumblebee....

Wild Side: The willow

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Saturday, April 2, could have been disappointing for an insect photographer. True, an early overcast gave way to a strong, early spring sun, and the day looked warm enough. But a cold, persistent northwest...

Wild Side: It’s here!

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The ebb and flow of the seasons ranks among the most predictable aspects of the natural world. Astronomers can pin, to the second, each solstice and equinox for decades or centuries into the future....

Wild Side: The blue jay

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For various reasons, I’ve stuck pretty close to home this winter, doing most of my naturalizing in or near our tiny yard in Oak Bluffs. This is not to complain: Like Henry David Thoreau,...

Wild Side: Ode to wasps

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Amid all the gloom that currently dominates the national media, the New York Times ran a real day-brightener (for me, at least) on Feb. 17. Writing for the “Trilobites” science series, Sabrina Imbler summarized...

Wild Side: Tracking the elusive fox sparrow

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I wouldn’t call the fox sparrow a rare bird on Martha’s Vineyard. I can’t think of a winter that yielded no records at all of this species, and at times this colorful sparrow can...

Wild Side: To feed or not to feed

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Longtime readers know my ambivalence about the practice of feeding wild birds. By concentrating birds around an unnaturally rich food supply in a human-modified setting, birdfeeding alters bird behavior, elevates risk of disease, exposes...

Wild Side: Making a strong showing

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The 62nd annual Martha’s Vineyard Christmas Bird Count (CBC) was held amid drizzle, fog, and an incredibly high tide on Sunday, Jan. 2. My own effort, counting birds from West Chop to Vineyard Haven...

Wild Side: House finches

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Perhaps the strongest trend evident this fall among the birds frequenting my yard in Oak Bluffs has been a resurgence in the number of house finches (Haemorhous mexicanus). House finches in our immediate neighborhood...

Wild Side: White-throated sparrows

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An endless source of mirth among birders is the way common names for birds often ignore obvious traits and focus instead on obscure markings. The eponymous tinted tummy on a red-bellied woodpecker, for example,...