Wild Side: Nature riffs like a jazz musician
I’ve always had a fondness for the little clusters of closely related species that evolution can produce. Sometimes it’s a whole genus, like those infuriatingly similar Empidonax flycatchers; sometimes it’s just a species pair,...
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...
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...
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....
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
Wild Side: On the hunt
On the long list of insects I’d like to see, one species near the top is the Northern mole cricket, Neocurtilla hexadactyla. The only known Vineyard representative of a small taxonomic family, Gryllotalpidae, that’s...
Wild Side: A new Vineyard resident
Climate change stands out as the greatest current threat to biodiversity. But when discussing nature, it’s axiomatic that no matter how dire a threat, some species manage to benefit from the changing conditions.
A recent...
Wild Side: Tiger beetles
A favorite activity for my wife and I is canoeing on the Vineyard’s bays and great ponds. Our canoe is a lumbering brute, heavy, flat-bottomed, and broad-beamed, an old boat already when we bought...
Wild Side: The stealthy robber fly
Among the most impressive members of the family Asilidae — that is, the robber flies — the genus Laphria poses something of a puzzle on Martha’s Vineyard. We’ve got vast amounts of seemingly suitable...
Wild Side: Bee happy
With more than 200 species of bees having been documented on Martha’s Vineyard, it’s no surprise that our bee fauna exhibits a huge amount of variation. Large and small, social and solitary, specialist and...
Wild Side: Planting for wildlife
As environmental awareness grows among the general population, and as the benefits that can come from creating even small-scale wildlife resources grow more apparent, I’m often asked for advice on plants to use for...
Wild Side: Eye of the naturalist
Sometimes described as the founder of American ornithology, Alexander Wilson (1766–1813) was a naturalist and painter of prodigious talent. The nine volumes of his magisterial “American Ornithology,” released between 1808 and 1814, portray 268...
Wild Side: The Discreet, Though Plentiful, Red-Eyed Vireo
Standing on a hilltop in the woodland of the Chilmark moraine this past weekend, I experienced a single, dominant impression: Red-eyed vireo is one seriously common bird on Martha’s Vineyard. One of our later...
Wild Side: Yellow-throated warbler
Well, he’s back again.
In one of the more bizarre episodes in the history of Martha’s Vineyard bird life, a male yellow-throated warbler is once again on territory amid the tall pitch pines of a...
Wild Side: Colletes, the cellophane bees
My current favorite bee genus? Why, thank you for asking: Colletes!
Colletes isn’t the most diverse bee genus, and its members are not the prettiest of bees. But this genus, which is fairly well represented...