The news that many a Vineyard and off-Island birder has been waiting for: the Martha’s Vineyard Christmas Bird Count will be held on Saturday, Jan. 4, 2014. If you are interested in joining a...

The thought of alerting bird watchers to make sure their bird baths are full on Oct. 31 never crossed my mind. However, I find that with this drought, the birds in my yard and the woods and fields...

Flip Harrington and I had our first yellow-rumped warbler and white-crowned sparrow in our Quenames bird bath on Oct. 19. The holly trees behind the bath provided shelter and probably insects for our...

The change of light in the fall is my cue to put up my feeders. I can remember the first of many feeders I have had over the years. It was a big pine cone stuffed with a mix of bacon fat, peanut...

Birding on the Vineyard and elsewhere has changed immensely with the invention of the cell phone and iPad. A good example occurred Oct. 5 in the late morning when Lanny McDowell, Pete Gilmore and Ken...

A warbler seen in the Phillips Preserve and a thrush spotted in the Gay Head Moraine are members of groups of birds I have always had trouble distinguishing between. The Connecticut warbler is one of...

We were packing to leave for a trip to Maine on Sept. 14 to visit old Vineyard friends and attend a wedding. Our backpacks were on the kitchen table and I had just filled the hummingbird feeder. One...

On Sept. 7 Tim Spahr, an excellent birder from the mainland, was birding with Allan Keith in the Gay Head Moraine. They were on a small bridge over a trickling stream when Tim heard a chip note that...

In 1974 my brother in law, Brian Harrington, while working at the Manomet Center for Conservation Sciences, developed International Shorebird Surveys to “gather basic migration information on...

The tide is changing for the bird population. The summer residents are slowly departing and other species are arriving to fill that niche. The most obvious difference for beachgoers is the terns....