Bird News: Vagrants and Visitors on a Peculiar Island

As Darwin found on the Galpagos, an island provides the perfect laboratory in which to chart new finds and learn universal truths. With the enthusiasm of the devotee, columnist E. Vernon Laux documents a year in the life of the Martha's Vineyard bird population and provides a bird's-eye view of the seasons on New England's most celebrated island. He reports on the characters that watch and the creatures that are watched in the skies and waters, beaches and mudflats, fields and forests of the Vineyard. Laux also lovingly describes his own discovery: the chickmouse, a hybrid of two common species. In his sometimes dramatic, sometimes serene corner of the world, Laux explores complex relationships through acute observation and enthusiastic attention. (more)

There was a time, and not so long ago, when the little island of Martha's Vineyard, Massachusetts, was the undiscovered hunting ground not only of the well-to-do, but also of birdwatchers from all over the world. The island has since been "discovered," overrun by tourists and casual visitors. Birdwatchers have changed, too; as E. Vernon Laux writes, tongue securely in cheek, "Birding is no longer the exclusive domain of little old ladies in sensible shoes and dottering Englishmen." But the birds have not changed, and Laux paints an exceedingly affectionate portrait of their lives in this little corner of the Atlantic Ocean, a place full of swallows, loons, kinglets, warblers, buntings, woodcock, orioles, murrelets, gulls, blackbirds, and other birds--some 300 species (more)

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