In the next few weeks, the first seasonal residents will return to Nantucket. No, not mainlanders- migratory birds! The majority of birds that we see on Nantucket spend the winter elsewhere, either somewhere very warm or very cold depending on the bird. Soon a trickle of songbirds and shorebirds will arrive, beginning another spring nesting season.

In today’s age of modern technology, there are more options than ever to learn about birds in your own backyard. One of the coolest items to recently hit the market is the Bird Buddy, a compact bird-feeder that takes pictures of the birds that visit, identifies them for you and sends the photo directly to an app on your smartphone.

At the Linda Loring Nature Foundation, one of our volunteers, Tessa Husted, made it her mission to help out the solitary bees in need and created a Pollinator Hideout. A Pollinator Hideout is a specially designed space that provides shelter and protection for bees during the winter. These hideouts come in various forms, from simple garden structures to more elaborate bee hotels. The goal is to create a welcoming and safe space where bees can find a barrier against the biting winds and freezing temperatures.

The Linda Loring Nature Foundation (LLNF) launches a new visualization tool highlighting 5 years of grassland restoration work through invasive Japanese Black Pine removal. This LLNF Story Map is a communication tool that illustrates the goals and outcomes of a project using maps, photos, and data.

The National Audubon Society was celebrating the 124th year of the Christmas Bird Count program this year, and it was Nantucket’s 69th year of participating in it.

From the preliminary results, we counted 128 species and 83,626 individual birds. The rare species sightings included an Eared Grebe, Western Tanager, Lark Sparrow, Blue-headed Vireo, Common Gull (Kamchatka), Lincoln Sparrow, Painted Bunting, Common Gallinule, Tufted Duck, and Sedge Wren. 

We still have a few days of school vacation left, and the weather looks pretty favorable for an outdoor adventure. Check out a few ways you can get outside and enjoy some fresh air on Nantucket before the year’s end.

Researchers from Framingham State University, the Linda Loring Nature Foundation, and Eastern Connecticut State University announced that they have published an article investigating the origins of the Nantucket deer population. This research supports the hypothesis that only a handful of deer are responsible for the large population now on island.

We are approaching the Winter Solstice, the shortest day and the earliest sunset of the year. Although people tend to think of the solstice as a day, the actual event is just a fleeting moment when the Earth is tilted as far away from the Sun on its axis as possible. In the Northern Hemisphere, this will happen on Thursday, December 21^st, 2023 at 10:27 pm, and will mark the start of Winter in the astronomical calendar. The good news is that after the solstice, days start getting longer again and sunsets will occur later.