Correllus State Forest News Today

Ah, early spring! Or, as we know it here on Martha’s Vineyard, the Season of Intense Frustration. Quite routinely in early April, mainland Massachusetts will have sunny days with temperatures in the 60s or even 70s, while we languish under an overcast sky with temperatures 15 or even 20 degrees cooler. It just isn’t fair! […]

On Thursday, August 25, I met with high school science teacher Anna Cotton to discuss a natural history classroom project she’s developing. We briefly toured a likely site for the fieldwork portion of that project: a section of the broad firebreak on the northern edge of Correllus State Forest, just south of the regional high […]

The Marthas Vineyard Times Wild Side: Elegant field sparrows This small bird with a distinctive song prefers a woody habitat. The song of a field sparrow is a series of clear, sweet-toned, descending whistles. — Laurie Sheppard, USFWS I have a weakness for sparrows, those “little brown jobs” that are the bane of beginning birders due to their apparent absence of any real field marks. With practice, sparrows actually turn out to be fairly easy to identify (especially if you lea...