Matt Pelikan
Wild Side: Birds from Lee
Vineyard birders have a love-hate relationship with tropical storms. Like anybody else, we respect the enormous power of these systems, and dread the damage...
Wild Side: Sense of direction
September is the peak of migration, not just for birds but for bats, butterflies, and dragonflies as well. We tend to think of fall...
Wild Side: It’s just a little crush
Most of the time, I’m an equal-opportunity naturalist: Everything I see holds the same interest for me, and everything seems uniquely beautiful. But every...
Wild Side: The seasons are turning for birds
In nature, as in anything else, arrivals and beginnings are relatively easy to spot. One day in early spring, birds appear that weren’t there...
Wild Side: The driveway is prime real estate
If you were asked to describe good pollinator habitat, you’d probably come up with something like a wildflower meadow or a pollinator garden: green,...
Wild Side: Tree crickets
Members of the insect order Orthoptera — grasshoppers, crickets, and katydids — can be found year-round on Martha’s Vineyard (immatures of a few species...
Wild Side: Sheep laurel and its lonely fan
Across much of the Vineyard, on sandy soils both moist and dry, the most obvious late spring flowers may be those of sheep laurel,...
Wild Side: The mysterious chimney swift
After the robin, the chickadee, and the blue jay, the chimney swift may have been the first bird I learned to identify. I was...
Wild Side: A hard frost, late
When it comes to weather, every year is unique, perhaps more so on Martha’s Vineyard than in most places. And so far, at least...
Wild Side: Spring orioles
Spring songbird migration on Martha’s Vineyard is a highly variable phenomenon from year to year. Sometimes, about all that happens is that our breeding...
Wild Side: She’s a polyester bee
How does a female solitary bee start her day? I’d never asked myself the question, but recently ended up with a chance to answer...
Wild Side: Bee season is here
My first native bee of the season? Why, thank you for asking! It was a male Bradley’s mining bee, Andrena bradleyi, which I found...
Wild Side: Spring may look sparse
As the first half of April arrives, Vineyarders can finally think of winter in the past tense. To be sure, we could still see...
Wild Side: It’s an ill wind
Martha’s Vineyard is a great place for birding, with a high diversity of birds present at most times of the year, and a remarkable...
Wild Side: Townsend’s solitaire
So far, 2023 has been a bit of a snoozer from the birdwatching perspective. Not much unusual has been reported, and at least in...
Wild Side: On the house fly
“House fly.” I think we all get roughly the same image from that common name: a grayish fly, between a quarter- and a half-inch...
Wild Side: The hermit thrush
One of the more gratifying aspects of birding is the way even familiar species find ways to surprise you. Common birds turn up in...
Wild Side: Red-bellied (Carolina) woodpecker
In these days when so many bird species are beleaguered by habitat loss, climate change, disease, environmental toxins, competition from invasive species, or other...
Wild Side: CBC
The 63rd annual Martha’s Vineyard Christmas Bird Count (CBC), held on the first day of the year, was in one respect the most enjoyable...
Wild Side: New World warblers
The New World warblers — that’s the avian family Parulidae — features many of the most popular and attractive songbirds in the world. As...