Matt Pelikan

Last Saturday, Jan. 5, I participated in the annual Vineyard Christmas Bird Count, part of a vast national survey coordinated by National Audubon. Dozens...

If your mind dwells much as mine does on the natural world, it’s easy to give in to despair. Every day brings new insults:...

Things are always changing in the world of wildlife. Sometimes the process is slow and subtle; in other cases, though, things happen more quickly...

Work, medical woes, and off-Island travel have curtailed my birding in recent months, making most of my enjoyment of birds vicarious. I was happy,...

Winter has hit us suddenly and hard this year, with a series of coastal storms and an early onset of cold weather. One could...

When I arrived on the Vineyard in 1997, moving into a relatively new house with conventional landscaping in Oak Bluffs, I knew very little...

Surprises are all fine and well. But one of the most satisfying things about observing nature is the predictable recurrence of events. The planet...

Mid-October is nearing the end of the season for butterflies on the Vineyard (indeed, insect life of all kinds is winding down for the...

Regular readers will know that I have a certain fondness for flies. While some flies are justifiably detested by humans — blowflies and mosquitoes,...

We’re still in the peak season for orthoptera — crickets, katydids, and grasshoppers — and the past few weeks have shown that there is...

As much as I love the wildlife of Martha’s Vineyard, I have to admit that mainland America has a lot to offer as well....

Everybody knows the monarch butterfly, that most charismatic of lepidopterans, depending exclusively on milkweed plants to feed its caterpillars. It’s one of the most...

Broad-headed bugs are fairly large insects, with big individuals approaching an inch in length. The common name for the family comes from the shape...

I have a special fondness for species that have evolved to exploit conditions that would that would be inhospitable or even harmful to near...

After decades studying insects, I suppose I’m habituated to noticing things that are too small, too quick, or too inconveniently positioned for normal people...

Many people feel a visceral revulsion to spiders. And while the risks are vastly overestimated among the general public, the fact that a few...

Common, easily observed, and quietly beautiful, the mourning dove is a bird all Vineyarders should be acquainted with. Small-headed, about the size of a...

I’ve written before about my growing fascination with flies — that is, the insect order Diptera — and I’m sorry to report that the...

Like most naturalists, I’m a big fan of “firsts” — seeing a species for the first time, finding something never before recorded in a...

The fly family Conopidae suffers from a ludicrous common name: They are generally known as “thick-headed flies.” The name presumably comes from the blocky,...