Wednesday, November 6, 2024
Home Authors Posts by Matt Pelikan

Matt Pelikan

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Wild Side: Hiding in plain sight

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File this one under “hiding in plain sight.” A relatively new arrival on Martha’s Vineyard, as far as I can tell, the jumping bush...

Wild Side: Drury’s longhorn bee

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On the last day of September, I got home from work and did what I do virtually every warm day throughout the year: turned...

Wild Side: Our Northern flower moth

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Regular readers, and our long-suffering neighbors in Oak Bluffs, will know that over a span of 20 years, we’ve gradually converted most of our...

Wild Side: Seed weevils

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“Seed weevil” is the kind of imprecise common name that drives naturalists to distraction. To start with, weevils, taken generally, are a vast group...

Wild Side: On the hunt

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On the long list of insects I’d like to see, one species near the top is the Northern mole cricket, Neocurtilla hexadactyla. The only...

Wild Side: A new Vineyard resident

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Climate change stands out as the greatest current threat to biodiversity. But when discussing nature, it’s axiomatic that no matter how dire a threat,...

Wild Side: Tiger beetles

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A favorite activity for my wife and I is canoeing on the Vineyard’s bays and great ponds. Our canoe is a lumbering brute, heavy,...

Wild Side: The stealthy robber fly

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Among the most impressive members of the family Asilidae — that is, the robber flies — the genus Laphria poses something of a puzzle...

Wild Side: Bee happy

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With more than 200 species of bees having been documented on Martha’s Vineyard, it’s no surprise that our bee fauna exhibits a huge amount...

Wild Side: Planting for wildlife

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As environmental awareness grows among the general population, and as the benefits that can come from creating even small-scale wildlife resources grow more apparent,...

Wild Side: Eye of the naturalist

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Sometimes described as the founder of American ornithology, Alexander Wilson (1766–1813) was a naturalist and painter of prodigious talent. The nine volumes of his...

Wild Side: The Discreet, Though Plentiful, Red-Eyed Vireo

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Standing on a hilltop in the woodland of the Chilmark moraine this past weekend, I experienced a single, dominant impression: Red-eyed vireo is one...

Wild Side: Yellow-throated warbler

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Well, he’s back again.  In one of the more bizarre episodes in the history of Martha’s Vineyard bird life, a male yellow-throated warbler is once...

Wild Side: Colletes, the cellophane bees

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My current favorite bee genus? Why, thank you for asking: Colletes! Colletes isn’t the most diverse bee genus, and its members are not the prettiest...

Wild Side: The inscrutable dandelion

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If there’s one point I truly insist on regarding natural history, it’s that the most common organisms and the most familiar settings can be...

Wild Side: The frustrating season

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Ah, early spring! Or, as we know it here on Martha’s Vineyard, the Season of Intense Frustration. Quite routinely in early April, mainland Massachusetts...

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...

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...

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....

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...