Wild Side: Odd ducks
If you’re fond of odd-looking birds, you’re in luck! Late fall is prime time for viewing American coots on Martha’s Vineyard. A member of the same taxonomic family as rails, the coot is one...
Wild Side: The 3D chess of a Cooper’s hawk
This past weekend, as I was doing some final fall chores in our Oak Bluffs yard, I noticed an elongated blob high in a huge catalpa tree across the street from our house. Without...
Wild Side: The yellow-rumped warbler
Last Saturday, Oct. 28, saw a flurry of activity around the parking loop at the Gay Head Cliffs in Aquinnah. Some of the activity was human: A field trip run by the Martha’s Vineyard...
Wild Side: Chipping sparrows
October is sparrow season on the Vineyard, and indeed throughout southern New England. This is the month when all the sparrow species that occur here regularly can be found, and when the odds are...
Wild Side: Seaside goldenrod
This past weekend, I focused my fieldwork on one of my favorite plants: seaside goldenrod, Solidago sempervirens. The common name accurately sums up the habitat preference of this important wildflower: It’s primarily a plant...
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 a direct hit by a strong storm invariably produces. On...
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 migration as mainly a southward movement, and that makes sense....
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 so often, this egalitarian outlook breaks down, and some particular...
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 the day before, and you know that spring migration has...
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, flowery, lush, and diverse. You wouldn’t be wrong; pollinators do...
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 overwinter, and can be found on mild winter days). But...
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, Kalmia angustifolia. Patchily distributed but locally abundant, this low shrub...
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 probably 5 or 6 years old, and once these birds...
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 from some perspectives, the spring of 2023 has been an...
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 birds gradually filter in, set up shop, and start nesting....
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 it anyway.
On a long drive back to the Vineyard on...
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 on April 4 along Lambert’s Cove Road. And it was...
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 snow, and it’ll be the middle of June before we...
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 record for producing outrageous rarities. But nobody has ever accused...
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 the areas where I’ve been birding, numbers even of expected...