Some proudly define them as one of a kind, others say that they are just too flaky. Both are correct when it comes to snowflakes.

Snowflakes are not frozen rain, but the conglomeration of many single crystals of ice that grow individually when water vapor in the clouds condenses and freezes. One ice crystal measures only .04 to .08 inches, but can have as many as a billion billion (10 to the 19th) water molecules.

The adventure started when Matt Pelikan received a call from a graduate student in the Department of Natural Resources at the University of Rhode Island. She informed Matt that she was studying black scoters and specifically her project was to track their winter movements. To do so she was fitting black scoters with transmitters similar to those that Rob Bierregaard uses on the ospreys. One of “her” birds was sending signals from the same spot on Norton Point. Is there some way she could hook up with someone to take her out to try to find the bird and/or the transmitter?

I have rats. Thankfully they are not in the house but are running wild in the vegetable garden. They have eaten the tops of my beets, hollowed out the celeriac, and made their way into the tubs of greens in the big coldframes.

Martha’s Vineyard Regional High School principal Stephen Nixon announces the honor roll for the first quarter of the 2010-2011 academic year.

Grade 12 high honors go to: Hannah Elias Celeste Ewing, Jesse Fogg, Sarah Johnson and Kira Shipway.

Grade 11 high honors go to: Riley Donegan, Maya Harcourt, EmmaJean Holley, Christine Janak, Elke Klein, Caitlin Serpa, John Shannon, William Stewart and Liam Wallace.

A 26-year-old Edgartown woman was airlifted to Massachusetts General Hospital on Monday afternoon following an unusual single-car crash on the Edgartown-Vineyard Haven Road across from the regional high school.

The Christmas Bird Count has been conducted since 1900, an amazing 111 years. It is a bird-watching activity that took the place of a Christmas side hunt, an old holiday tradition where teams of hunters would compete to see who could kill the largest number of wild birds on Christmas Day. It took Frank Chapman to change the tide. In 1900 he proposed that instead of killing the birds, shooters and others would count rather than kill the birds in their area.

To most Islanders, the name Denys Wortman is most familiar as that of the former Tisbury selectman. But before that Wortman, there was another Denys Wortman, the painter-turned-cartoonist whose work could be found six days a week for more than 30 years in the pages of New York’s World-Telegram and Sun (and syndicated widely in other papers).

I returned to the Island just after the Yard article appeared in the Christmas Eve edition of the Gazette.

As an Island creditor owed $18,000 by the Yard, I have been on the receiving end of a dismissive response to both my concern for Wendy Taucher — who did not leave but was asked to resign and when she refused to do so was fired — and my concerns about repayment.

My overall concern goes deeper than this lapse of respect.

For the record, Ms. Taucher was not paid this year for her work.

Tom Hodgson of Tiasquam Road in West Tisbury once again reports the year’s first snowdrops, nestled under the shelter of a bush on Music street; it’s the perfect microhabitat for early bloom.

Clarence (Trip) Barnes 3rd, the colorful Island business owner long associated with his namesake trucking company, is now seeking a new title: green technology pioneer.