Matt Pelikan

On Wednesday, Oct. 30, word of a dead leatherback turtle beached on Cape Poge turned up on social media. I was one of several...

When it comes to migration, the blue jay, among our most familiar and recognizable birds, plays by its own rules. By and large, the...

As the days shorten and the butterfly season begins to wind down, the Vineyard appears to be enjoying an unusually good late-season showing by...

Where have you been all these years, Encoptolophus? That’s what I want to know.Clouded grasshopper (Encoptolophus sordidus), a boldly marked, grayish insect, turned up...

When it comes to what’s happening in the natural world, you don’t know what you’re missing.No, really: If you know you’re missing something, you...

When the average person thinks of katydids, which isn’t very often, they likely have in mind the true katydid, Pterophylla camellifolia. A species that...

Everyone knows that evolution can take one basic design for a plant or animal and diversify it into scores, or even hundreds, of specialized...

My gardening pride and joy is a patch of ‘Jersey Supreme’ asparagus I laboriously planted back in 2009. When two species of asparagus beetles...

The northern broken-dash is a tiny brownish butterfly, not much over a half-inch long. Its peculiar, hyphenated name comes from the stigma on male...

On a recent canoe outing up into channels in a salt marsh adjacent to Sengekontacket Pond, I was delighted to find a batch of...

Despite the rainy weather that has afflicted us, our Oak Bluffs yard is bursting with flowers: catmint, clover, oxeye daisy, hawkweed, and coreopsis fill...

While I enjoy birding under any circumstances, I’m especially fond of “citizen science” birding: participating in projects or events that use amateur observers to...

Last Saturday, May 25, I paid a visit to a colony of mining bees I’ve been keeping an eye on. The site isn’t much...

Autumn is typically the peak season for Vineyard birding, as migrants stream south along the coast, taking advantage of ocean-moderated temperatures and resource-rich coastal...

All butterflies are beautiful. But in my view, one particular group, the hairstreaks, are the prettiest of the bunch. Small (about the size of...

“Wild Side,” it has to be admitted, has a fascination with the obscure: Many of my subjects are small, rare, or hidden species that...

Among the most plentiful arthropods in very early spring are, perhaps surprisingly, spiders. Finding them takes some astuteness — most spiders active in early...

One of the stranger insects I’ve encountered on the Vineyard is Nomotettix cristatus, sometimes called the crested pygmy grasshopper. Pygmy grasshoppers in general compose...

The approach of spring is signaled by a host of changes: longer days, stronger sun, the onset of bird song, plants breaking dormancy. But...

Birders really want to get it right: Correct identification is the central challenge of birding, and especially with less common birds, reports shape our...