Felix Neck Wildlife Sanctuary will conduct new research with the help of citizen scientists, thanks to an environmental science research grant awarded by the Vermont Institute of Natural Science and the Student Conservation Association.
The grant provides funding for a conservation intern to work on wildlife research projects, including horseshoe crab monitoring, dragonfly and damselfly inventories, and breeding bird and salamander surveys.
Today is fall festival, a traditional celebration at Felix Neck Wildlife Sanctuary in Edgartown. Every year since 1980, the sanctuary has held a day-after Thanksgiving event which brings together strangers and friends, young and old to sip hot cider and participate in an array of family-friendly activities.
While other people are busy shopping and scurrying about with holiday errands, at Felix Neck there is a different kind of tradition for those who want to get outdoors and work off some of that turkey dinner.
Leading a tour of the Sengekontacket, Felix Neck guide Emily Smith rounded Sarsons Island Friday in her red kayak and stopped. Something in the pond had caught her eye. She backtracked, peered into the water for a few moments and then pulled out a horseshoe crab. The kayakers on the tour crowded around for a look, bumping their boats together as they packed in. She flipped the crab over to show its small legs squirming in the air and began spelling out facts about the creature.
Spending time with Augustus (Gus) Ben David 2nd at the World of
Reptiles is a learning experience from start to finish.
But it is in the snake room, in the basement of his home in
Edgartown, surrounded by over a hundred feet of slithering reptiles
locked in wooden cages, where Mr. Ben David is in his element.
The Martha's Vineyard Land Bank, the Felix Neck Wildlife Trust and the Massachusetts Audubon Society closed on a land purchase last week that will protect the last key piece of undeveloped land at Felix Neck.
In a three-way partnership that will protect the last key piece of undeveloped land at one of the oldest wildlife sanctuaries on the Vineyard, the Martha's Vineyard Land Bank, the Massachusetts Audubon Society and the Felix Neck Wildlife Trust announced yesterday that they will buy 34 acres from Lucia Moffet for $2.55 million.
The Moffet property runs along the entire length of the entrance road to the Felix Neck Wildlife Sanctuary on the eastern side.
