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...
Garden Notes: Pallid foliage? We await warmer weather
Autumn olive (Eleagnus angustifolia) and grasses are blooming, and add to oak and pine pollen. Odd weather this spring, it seems: cold, drought, and a pollen storm par excellence, until the weekend’s rainfall.
Many flowering...
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....
Garden Notes: Spring’s magic moments
The graceful beeches along banks of West Spring Street near the Tashmoo Water Works, and down the hill into Menemsha, have leafed out, always part of Island spring’s magic moments. Spring has sprung again:...
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...
Garden Notes: The spring garden
Gus Ben David and Chameli the golden eagle have been sharing their journeying and learning together for 41 entwined years!
The winter was mild, but this spring has been harsh. Temperatures are brisk, but sunny...
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...
A garden note
Earth Day, April 22, falls outside the usual cycle of “Garden Notes” this year. It appears we who garden are among the remaining protectors of our natural surroundings: wetlands, pollinators, bats, nesting birds, clear...
Garden Notes: Ah, spring
April: The first ospreys utter their distinctive cry hovering high above, while redwing blackbirds warble mellifluously in the marsh below. Only heard since the end of March in my area, pinkletinks have chorused for...
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...
Garden Notes: A shout-out to spring
“Daffy down dilly has come up to town
In a yellow petticoat and a green gown.”
–Mother Goose rhyme
They are a shout-out to spring, which may otherwise be reluctant to arrive here. The earliest miniature daffodils...
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...
Garden Notes: Never say never
Officially, it is almost here, although spring is never early on the Vineyard. Whatever the signs might be, disregard them! There is usually a big disappointment waiting to ambush the overeager.
It is, however, time...
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...
Garden Notes: Where we are
“As the days lengthen, the cold strengthens.” The old adage is seemingly affirmed. March is in: lion or lamb? January 2023 here was the wettest and warmest one in a while. Although the drought...
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 long, its wings spread as it perches, with an annoying...
Garden Notes: February flowers
We are far from the stable ages of the Holocene era, and are now firmly in the throes of the Anthropocene.
“Who can see the green earth any more/ As she was by the sources...
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 new settings at new times, or do things you’ve never...
Garden Notes: Integrated pest management
Not much winter, so far. The “new normal” action seems to be that it starts later and goes longer into spring. Snowdrops and pansies are in bloom. If we want to change actions, attitudes...
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 woes, it’s nice to be able to write occasionally about...