Every year at the end of October, we at the Nantucket Conservation Foundation celebrate International Bat Week along with our batty colleagues the world over as a way to highlight the important role that bats play in nature and to counter the narrative that bats are just spooky creatures associated with Halloween. This year, we…
Summer may have officially ended, but there is still plenty to see in bloom around Nantucket. August through mid-October bring a roster of newly emerging late bloomers, with the fall asters and goldenrods taking center stage. These members of the Aster Family (Asteraceae, or Compositae), have flower heads that are composed of several to many…
Our Science and Stewardship Department is excited to move forward with a new phase of habitat management work within the Serengeti area on the north side of the Milestone Road. For many years, residents and visitors have enjoyed the wide-open vistas across this portion of the Middle Moors, thanks to grassland restoration and management work…
You may have noticed NCF or other conservation organizations’ staff out working along Nantucket roadsides or bike path edges. In more typical years, the Nantucket Biodiversity Initiative’s Invasive Plant Species Committee organizes group digs, but with Covid-19, we are all out fighting the good fight separately and with the help of some dedicated solo volunteers.…
Every year the shorebird breeding season has its challenges and 2020 was no different. Fortunately for us, the shorebirds were unaware of Covid-19 and still continued to nest at their respective beaches across the island. From the 2020 preliminary data for Nantucket which includes Tuckernuck and Muskeget Islands, there was a total of 57 breeding…
The hot and humid summer season is flying by. Sweltering days spent in social distance are blending together, leaving some of us to scramble for a moment of quiet and peace. We can all use an excuse for a walk on a breezy day, realign our nature connection, and take in the color and diversity…
Our Science and Stewardship Department has been busy re-envisioning the future of Windswept Bog, one of the Foundation’s most popular properties, since cranberry cultivation was retired at this site in early 2019. We have been working with restoration ecologists at the Massachusetts Division of Ecological Restoration’s Cranberry Bog Program (Mass. DER) and soil scientists at…
by Dr. Jen Karberg, Research Program Supervisor As we dive into the warm steamy months of summer on Nantucket, we are also approaching the season of harmful algal blooms in our freshwater ponds. Algal blooms have made headlines in recent years as concerns have increased over harmful impacts to pets and humans. What should you…
By Neil Foley, Education Coordinator and Ecologist Sunrises on Nantucket are worth the effort every time, even for a night owl like myself. Before most of the island wakes for the day and the rotaries jam with the traffic, it’s a spectacular feeling to face the fog banks and listen to a chorus of songbirds…
If the fog would ever lift this summer, the view of the eastern Middle Moors from Altar Rock might look a little strange at the moment. Large swaths of scrub oak in the Moors have been completely defoliated for the third year in a row. The culprit is an outbreak of a native species called…