It was a triumphant return to form for the Martha’s Vineyard Regional High School football team in 2008.

After a run of successful but ultimately frustrating seasons, the Island team dominated its Mayflower League Large opponents and went undefeated in the conference, earning a berth in the Division 3A Eastern Massachusetts playoffs for the first time in five years.

Last week I got an earful.

It was not for any wrongdoing on my part; rather, it was an earful of wax (not to be gross) wings. A group or flock of these birds is called an earful or a museum of waxwings. It is now common to see groups as large as 100 of these birds in the fields and forests of the Island.

By LYNNE IRONS

Cape and Islands Sen. Robert A. O’Leary was recognized with a legislative leadership award by Mass Audubon on Nov. 6 for his role in the passage of the Oceans Act, an ocean management plan to protect fisheries and sensitive marine habitats, as well as promote responsible development of renewable energy.

The Intracoastal Waterway (ICW), inland waterway, or the Ditch, as it is also known, is an incredible piece of water. It offers the boater, whether by sail, paddle, oars or motor, a fascinating peek into the history and natural history of the Eastern Seaboard. The ICW doesn’t officially start (mile marker number one) until Norfolk, Va., and ends in Key West, Fla. (mile marker 1241). However, many seamen believe it starts at Cape Ann and goes to Brownsville, Tex.

Morgan Woods affordable housing development in Edgartown on Martha’s Vineyard has won the 2008 Urban Land Institute’s J. Ronald Terwilliger Workforce Housing Models of Excellence Award.

The award recognizes exemplary developments that meet workforce housing needs in high cost communities. Entries are judged on specific criteria including: extent of affordability, involvement of public/private partnership, energy cost savings, green construction and innovative building technologies that reduce cost and improve efficiency.

In many ways, autumn is the same as it ever was: the result of our Island, our region — this hemisphere — turning slowly away from the sun. Days still shrink as the nights grow longer. Temperatures gradually drop towards winter’s frigid lows, although perhaps not as low as they used to go. The trees still turn dramatic shades of yellow and red. And the indefinable qualities of the deepening blue sky, the brightening of the stars at night and the scent of leaves returning to the damp soil still stir feelings which defy description.

Chamber Music Concert

Island music lovers always have packed calendars between now and Christmas, and here is another date to set aside: on Nov. 29, the Martha’s Vineyard Chamber Music Society has planned an extraordinary concert for Islanders. That’s on the Saturday evening of Thanksgiving weekend, at 7:30 in the Old Whaling Church.

Eeeep-Eeeep!

As I make my way down the trail winding through the Aquinnah highland forest, the strange call repeats itself.

Eeeep-Eeeep!

I look around for the colorful bird that is surely the source of the noise. Perhaps it is one of those migratory species the Island is home to these autumn days.

Eeeep-Eeeep!

It’s a rock doc like you’ve never seen before: The average age of the singers is 81, and the group is a choir, not a clapped-out band of has-beens busting guitars on stage. The film Young at Heart follows the eponymous chorus from Northampton who belt out Sonic Youth and James Brown tunes, punk, pop, disco — even singing Dylan’s Forever Young at a penitentiary gig.