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 didn’t help, but didn’t really hinder any of the 13...
Garden Notes: The new garden year
The New Year is upon us; onward we go.
New Year’s resolutions are never a bad idea, even if they are promptly broken. These suggestions, which have appeared in previous New Year’s Garden Notes, are...
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, but in general, relatively little migration is occurring now, and...
Garden Notes: Wreaths and seed catalogues
The Dec. 11–12 “atmospheric river” rainstorm yielded almost five inches of welcome rain in our unofficial home rain gauge during the two-day period. Dukes County has been in mild drought, while the rest of...
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 year-round in significant numbers, and nests widely across the Island....
Garden Notes: Shrinking a lawn
It is far from drab, even as winter dusk draws in. Rains, at long last, saturating fields and woods! Dampness intensifies the golds and russets of grasses and foliage; slanting light deepens their glow.
Fiery...
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 of winter activity can persist where sun exposure and shelter...
Garden Notes: Time for digging
The goldenrod flowers pictured in the Sept. 26 “Garden Notes” have now aged to motley, brown-gray fuzz. Sitting at the dining table, I observe the patch’s activity through the window; it is constantly atwitter...
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” is an imprecise, generic common name that conceals a good...
Garden Notes: Perennial siting and planting
The year is winding down: November weather and frosts, time change, elections, the holidays — this year it almost seems like impossible overload.
Buy trees and shrubs
Fall sales are a chance to buy perennials, shrubs,...
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 cricket, Hapithus saltator, ranks among the most common cricket species...
Garden Notes: Settling into autumn
The recent trimming of our roadsides, giving them a landscaped look, gives additional visibility and lead time, maybe just nanoseconds, to avoid a deer collision. Nightfall comes earlier, and as we head homeward at...
The Island’s first perennial food forest
On Sept. 27, students, staff, and community stakeholders gathered at the Charter School to celebrate the opening of the Island’s first public food forest. The perennial food-producing garden mimics and supports natural systems, and...
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 on my camera, and took a swing through our yard...
Plant Local: Your yard, our habitat
Martha’s Vineyard Commission, in partnership with BiodiversityWorks, Polly Hill Arboretum, and the Vineyard Conservation Society, has created an initiative called Plant Local for integrating native plants, in support of local biodiversity and climate resilience....
Garden Notes: Tending to perennials in the fall
Soils are currently very dry, as is observed if doing any planting. Amazingly, the soil is powdery dry right under the surface, despite the long soaking from the three-day nor’easter week before last.
It is...
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 small yard into meadow, encouraging native grasses and wildflowers in...
Garden Notes: The slow glow of the late season
Wild goldenrod and asters dominate roadsides and open areas, against a backdrop of reddening little bluestem. Island life is slowing down, to the extent that we can all appreciate the mundane beauty that surrounds...
Hoppy to help: a community picking event
Local hop growers and beer lovers gathered at the Cleaveland House in West Tisbury on Thursday morning for the heavily anticipated annual hop picking event.
This year, 41 participants, many donning T-shirts from previous harvests,...
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 of beetles, with not far shy of a quarter-million described...