Matt Pelikan
Wild Side: Farms as habitat
In addition to pecking out Wild Side columns for the MV Times, my working life includes roles with BiodiversityWorks and the Betsy and Jesse...
Wild Side: The buzz on bumble bees
Everybody knows what bumble bees are: big, hairy, black-and-yellow insects flitting from flower to flower. At least eight species occur on the Vineyard, with...
Wild Side: Fuzzy fly mystery
A typical field season generates more questions than answers for me, producing a lamentable sense of backward progress: As the years go by, questions...
Wild Side: Island bees
Everybody has received the basic message about native bees: they are ecologically vital, and populations of at least some species have declined markedly, often...
Wild Side: Non-native earthworms
A down-Island gardener just brought me a surprise: a pail of compost containing worms the gardener had correctly identified as Asian jumping worms, one...
Wild Side: Cicada killer wasps
The most common type of question I get in early August has to do with wasps: Big ones, sometimes described as frighteningly large, black...
Wild Side: Butterfly milkweed
If there is a particular plant worthy of being named the Vineyard’s National Wildflower, it is surely butterfly milkweed, Asclepias tuberosa. It’s a plant...
Wild Side: East Coast grasshoppers
As interesting as I find grasshoppers to be, I have to admit that as a group, these are not particularly colorful insects. In keeping...
Wild Side: How long will it stay?
The past couple of weeks have been fine ones for me, replete with interesting wildlife sightings and opportunities to explore new or inaccessible areas....
Wild Side: Leafhoppers
Insects are currently enjoying a moment of mostly positive media attention, thanks to the remarkable mass emergence of periodical cicadas in parts of the...
Wild Side: Breeding birds
As the month of May winds down, the bird breeding season peaks. Here’s a report on the nesting activity in and around our yard...
Wild Side: Dung flies
In the natural world, everything is a resource. Even the most trivial or improbable niche has its occupier. Perhaps the most glaring example of...
Wild Side: Elegant field sparrows
I have a weakness for sparrows, those “little brown jobs” that are the bane of beginning birders due to their apparent absence of any...
Wild Side: Mysterious fly
As a student of insects, I spend a lot of time contemplating the daunting slopes of my personal Everest of ignorance. The class Insecta...
Wild Side: Pygmy grasshoppers
The most favorite of my many favorite insects is surely the crested pygmy grasshopper, Nomotettix cristatus. It’s probably the smallest Orthoptera occurring on Martha’s...
Wild Side: Killdeer plovers
Three species of so-called “banded plovers” occur regularly on Martha’s Vineyard. Of these, the piping plover, an intensively managed species that nests in modest...
Wild Side: Winter ants
In a recent column about feeding wild birds (bit.ly/30c79CX,) I pointed out that food you put out for birds often ends up feeding other...
Wild Side: Harlequin ducks
Waterfowl — and about 40 species of ducks, geese, and swans have been recorded on Martha’s Vineyard — may seem to be a boring...
Wild Side: Start small
It’s the time of year when I receive many inquiries about feeding wild birds: Is it ecologically helpful or harmful? Should I feed birds,...
Wild Side: American kestrel
While snowy owls and a remarkable invasion of finch species have dominated the attention of birders over the past few months, an attractive and...