Matt Pelikan
Wild Side: Special spot for birding
Are you an aspiring or beginning birder, looking to learn the common species and master basic birding skills? Are you a more advanced birder,...
Wild Side: Nature riffs like a jazz musician
I’ve always had a fondness for the little clusters of closely related species that evolution can produce. Sometimes it’s a whole genus, like those...
Wild Side: The great egret
Held on Sunday, Dec. 29, the annual Vineyard Christmas Bird Count (CBC) was a successful one. A few hours of drizzle in the morning...
Wild Side: Solstice sightings
With the arrival of the winter solstice, bird life on Martha’s Vineyard has settled into a fairly stable winter pattern. Vagrants are always possible,...
Wild Side: Red-tailed hawk
A robust and adaptable predator, the red-tailed hawk should be familiar to anyone who looks up on Martha’s Vineyard. The species is present here...
Wild Side: Red-legged grasshoppers
The season for insect-watching never completely ends on Martha’s Vineyard. One can always hunt for and (and sometimes find) concealed, overwinter forms. Small pockets...
Wild Side: Wasp colonies
It's hard to think of a less popular insect than the yellowjacket, maligned because they can sting. First, I should be clear that “yellowjacket”...
Wild Side: Hiding in plain sight
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
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
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
“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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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...