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What makes them rare, why are they here, and how do we find them?
Birders are always on the lookout for rare birds. Some want to increase their life lists. Some are just in search of …
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Virginia Andrews
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9/3/20
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Their style is peaceful as they feed, step by step, along the edges of exposed sandbars or mudflats. Their plumage is demure, predominantly brown and off- white. They are most easily identified by …
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Virginia Andrews
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7/30/20
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Last August, Doug Lindley had just taken off from Nantucket Memorial Airport on his way to New Bedford to get some engine work done on his plane when he spotted a pair of white sharks off Cisco …
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Joshua H. Balling
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7/8/20
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Snowy Egrets. Delicate, small white herons, they appear and disappear in our salt marshes.
What could speak more eloquently of summer’s arrival?
Sometimes, just a head pokes …
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Virginia Andrews
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7/8/20
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It was New Year’s Eve 1997. John Shea remembers it from the cry for help he heard coming from Codfish Park. A 46-foot, nearly 40-ton sperm whale had washed up, alive, on the beach. Two hours …
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Brian Bushard
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5/29/20
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A perfect summer day, with blue sky and bluer ocean, sun-sparkles glinting off the waves. The white sands are hot, but the breeze is cooling. Small white birds wheel over one particular spot above …
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Virginia Andrews
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5/29/20
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Like a lot of Nantucketers, birders migrate when raw winds blow and brochures beckon. For truly astounding beauty, color and diversity of species, south America is a birder’s paradise. but …
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Virginia Andrews
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10/29/19
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Fall means migration to many species of birds, and beachgoers and birders alike enjoy watching shorebirds. From tall, leggy waders to stocky little plovers, shorebirds follow the tides as they rest …
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Virginia Andrews
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9/4/19
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Surfing at Cisco, fishing off the beach at Eel Point, taking the family to 40th Pole. Nantucketers have always seen the beaches as part of their birthright.
But the fact is that just nine …
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Joshua H. Balling
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7/30/19
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Shelves stocked with old books. Linen sheets. Glassware enough to stock a restaurant. A single plastic mannequin. Countless miniature bells. A pair of nearly-new Jimmy Choo shoes, priced at only $30, …
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Lucy Turnipseed
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7/30/19
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It’s August on Nantucket, and as the tide falls, the emerging flats are filled with shorebirds of every type, both large and small. But even among other long-distance migrants one stands out: …
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Virginia Andrews
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7/30/19
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Every year readers of The Inquirer and Mirror vote on who is the best on-island in
multiple categories. This year participation was the best yet, with votes cast
in 116 categories. Read on …
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6/25/19
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The tide gauge sits unobtrusively just off Steamboat Wharf. In a time of ongoing political arguments about climate change, the gauge is a silent sentry whose work is non-partisan. It simply measures …
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John Stanton
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5/28/19
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Now we see them, now we don’t. Call them a mystery gull, as if just identifying gulls were not mystery enough in the first place.
But Bonaparte’s Gulls – …
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Virginia Andrews
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11/7/18
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The 17-room property is Christopher and Asta Skehel’s first hotel on Nantucket, a long-talked-of project put into action when they purchased the former Hotel Green property this winter and …
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Lucy Turnipseed
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8/30/18
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At its northern extremity their range stretches from Alaska to Newfoundland, across the boreal forests of Canada. Along the southern edge it wiggles from Northern California to Northern New Mexico, …
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Virginia Andrews
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8/30/18
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It could be a tongue-twister, stepping out for a spot of Spotted Sandpiper spotting. And it can sometimes be a challenge, as Spotted Sandpipers often shed some or all of their spotted plumage on …
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Virginia Andrews
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8/8/18
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Every year for the last 21 years, The Inquirer and Mirror has reached out to its readers and asked them to vote on what is best about the island in more than 90 categories. This spring an online …
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6/29/18
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Stately waders, those Great Egrets. With brilliant white plumage they stalk though our marshes, walk the edges of island ponds and sometimes gather on sandy flats along the harbor. Their long, long, …
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Virginia Andrews
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6/29/18
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A medium-sized shorebird with modest, almost non-descript brown plumage, a Willet wading peacefully about its business might be easy to overlook. But if a hawk, person, dog, crow or other intruder …
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Virginia Andrews
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6/1/18
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On Nantucket, some 3 million plastic straws are used and discarded each summer, a small part of the 500 million used daily in the United States, according to estimates by the nonprofit Ocean …
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Joshua H. Balling
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4/24/18
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“Kee-kee-kee-kee!”
Coming from above, loud, emphatic.
Nothing embodies spring like the long, drawn-out call of a hovering Osprey. The return of this big charismatic bird of …
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Virginia Andrews
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4/24/18
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Warblers in the winter? We usually think of these feathered scraps of dynamic movement as treats for the eye in the spring, summer or fall. But yes, there are warblers on Nantucket in the winter.
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Virginia Andrews
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11/1/17
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Every Wednesday morning from early September through February, the Island Waves synchronized skating team arrives at the rink off Backus Lane before the sun rises. Its nine girls, ages 9-16, skate in …
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Joshua H. Balling
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11/1/17
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One of the amazing spectacles of fall on Nantucket is the annual “swallow tornado” as migrating Tree Swallows mass in the air and pour down into their temporary roost for the night. We …
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Virginia Andrews
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8/28/17
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