Thursday, March 28, 2024
Home Authors Posts by Matt Pelikan

Matt Pelikan

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Young birds face threats from all quarters

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Parents have just a few weeks to bring their offspring to independence, fending off countless risks in the process.

Wildlife biologists tag willets to learn their habits

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Little is known about where willets winter, how they migrate, and how our coastal population is related to a second population that nests on the northern plains.

Butterflies on Martha’s Vineyard are varied and very interesting

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Knowing the habitats of these excellent butterflies will help you notice them in the first place.

Look closely to see beauty, elegance in beetles

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They may be small and inclined to hide, but insects are fully equal to birds as quarry for the careful observer.

Records help refresh and enrich memories

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I've always augmented my memory with written records, especially when working on a specific project.

Invasive pests crash the biodiversity of Martha’s Vineyard

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Flightless and strongly associated with horticultural plants, this species surely didn't get here on its own.

Singing to promote themselves, birds help us identify them

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Bird song is everywhere, now, and the number and diversity of birds singing seems to increase every day.

Vocal and social, cardinals are at home on Martha’s Vineyard

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Bright red males are unmistakable, but even females are eye-catching and a cinch to identify.

Zippity doo dah, Zippity aye, how nice to see a bluebird

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The bluebird is welcome for its song, its role in controlling insect numbers, and above all because of that blue.

Six principles to boost native species in your yard

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A green lawn and beds of non-native ornamentals benefit the lawn and garden product industry more than native wildlife.

Working the angles

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In early January, chickadees begin to chime in; later in the month, they're joined by house finches, and as February proceeds, song sparrows tune up.

Extreme cold challenges wildlife on Martha’s Vineyard

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Prolonged cold, especially when paired with snow cover, represents a sort of ecological bottleneck, killing many individuals.

Martha’s Vineyard birders appreciate wintertime juncos

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Juncos are not particularly shy birds, and if they are frequenting your feeding station, you can't miss them.

Martha’s Vineyard birders take a year-end accounting

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Approximately 60 birders took to the field, and tracked down more than 21,000 individual birds representing 121 species.

Rare and elusive, auks winter off Martha’s Vineyard shores

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Though they're hard to find and even harder to get a good look at, I've always had a fondness for the auks.

Feeding birds is serious business on Martha’s Vineyard

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Birds are nice friends to have. Feeding them, as lots of Islanders do, can have unintended consequences.

A common pigeon asks for help on a Martha’s Vineyard ferryboat

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The episode reminded me that humans and animals, for all their differences, also share many similarities.

Finches due to swarm over Martha’s Vineyard soon

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On the Vineyard as well as in the rest of our region, this will be a bountiful season for these northern birds.

Mushrooms bloom on Martha’s Vineyard in autumn

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Conditions have produced an unusually lengthy season for these interesting Islanders, along with robust numbers and diversity.

Nature never gets old, on Martha’s Vineyard or anywhere else

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The complexity of nature is virtually infinite, and in a half-century of study, I've barely scratched the surface.