Matt Pelikan

As usual for this time of year, the production of more mourning doves is in full swing in our small Oak Bluffs yard. But...

Breaking a decades-old tradition of wallowing in seasonal affective disorder and grumbling about late-winter weather on the Vineyard, your intrepid Wild Side columnist and...

On Friday the 21st, I surprised a hermit thrush as it fed on multiflora rose berries next to the building I work in. The...

Winter, naturally, is a slow season for insect observation, with only a modest variety of particularly hardy or specially adapted species active. Some of...

Groundhog Day might be my favorite holiday. It’s not that I have any particular fondness for rodents. And the six more weeks of winter...

If you’re reading this, you’re probably a human being. As such, while there are exceptions, you’re likely more than five feet long and weigh...

Ah, there are few things better than a natural history problem solved! A tough ID nailed down, a droll bit of ecology revealed. Such...

A bit larger than a blue jay, belted kingfishers are chunky birds with a scraggly crest on their head that gives them their regal...

I could never pick just one favorite bird. But surely on the short list would be the short-eared owl, a crow-size, brownish bird of...

A high percentage of the meadow voles that I see are in a difficult situation indeed: dangling from the talons of a red-tailed hawk...

On Wednesday, Oct. 30, word of a dead leatherback turtle beached on Cape Poge turned up on social media. I was one of several...

When it comes to migration, the blue jay, among our most familiar and recognizable birds, plays by its own rules. By and large, the...

As the days shorten and the butterfly season begins to wind down, the Vineyard appears to be enjoying an unusually good late-season showing by...

Where have you been all these years, Encoptolophus? That’s what I want to know.Clouded grasshopper (Encoptolophus sordidus), a boldly marked, grayish insect, turned up...

When it comes to what’s happening in the natural world, you don’t know what you’re missing.No, really: If you know you’re missing something, you...

When the average person thinks of katydids, which isn’t very often, they likely have in mind the true katydid, Pterophylla camellifolia. A species that...

Everyone knows that evolution can take one basic design for a plant or animal and diversify it into scores, or even hundreds, of specialized...

My gardening pride and joy is a patch of ‘Jersey Supreme’ asparagus I laboriously planted back in 2009. When two species of asparagus beetles...

The northern broken-dash is a tiny brownish butterfly, not much over a half-inch long. Its peculiar, hyphenated name comes from the stigma on male...

On a recent canoe outing up into channels in a salt marsh adjacent to Sengekontacket Pond, I was delighted to find a batch of...