Keep Calm and Bird On: July 2025

July 1, 2025
“If you don’t look, you don’t see. You have to go and look.”
-Edith Andrews

July is a hazardous month for birds on Nantucket. This year is a season of second—or third, even fourth, nesting attempts, after a cold, stormy, spring. Higher than usual tides, strong winds, delayed food availability, naturally affect beach-nesters. Predators can wipe out eggs or young. Ravens on Tuckernuck were reportedly eating Plover and Oystercatcher eggs “like popcorn.” Gulls, crows, feral cats, loose dogs, and heedless vehicles hold danger.

 

Even if adult birds passed the initial gauntlet, young birds are most vulnerable when they begin encountering the world for the first time. Adults may discover that what seemed like a safe yard a month or six weeks before is suddenly occupied by human activity, with dogs or cats, sudden lights, noise, machines, toxic sprays, that were not there in April or May. Traffic has tripled; many birds in the Maria Mitchell Association collection were salvaged after being hit on a road. Windows are cleaner; so, what looks to a bird on the outside like a patch of open sky, or a route through a yard, may turn out to be hard as a rock, breaking necks or concussing skulls. 

 

Even if there are quiet areas in a yard, spraying trees could drench a female sitting tight on a nest in hazardous, sticky, or irritating, foul-smelling, toxins. Killing insects also removes birds’ major food source: insects. Even birds content to eat seeds in winter prefer to raise their young on beetles, caterpillars, or adult insects, to give them the high-fat, high-protein food they need for quick growth. They do not have a long time to get the job of reproduction completed.

 

Danger comes from below as well as above; poisoned rats and mice do not die immediately; as they suffer, they become easy prey. Thus, they are fatal to secondary consumers like hawks and owls. In the case of Barn Owls, one highly toxic rodent can wipe out the whole family when it kills the male who provides for them.

 

Can we live with “Nature?” Too many people, these days, seem to answer “No.” But to disconnect from the natural world endangers our health too.

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Happy 207th Birthday, Maria Mitchell!

By Jascin N. Leonardo Finger • July 28, 2025
August 1, 2025 marks Maria Mitchell’s 207 th Birthday! Since just about the founding of the Maria Mitchell Association – way back in 1902 – the MMA has hosted some celebration or marked the occasion of our namesake’s birth. From 3-5PM FRIDAY, AUGUST 1, 2025 , Vestal Street will be close to traffic and our Vestal Street properties will be open free to the public. We will have activities, games, art projects, live music with Susan Berman and Ray Saunders, and refreshments will be served. So, stop by and say hello! JNLF P.S. If we actually get rain, we will move our celebration to Saturday, August 2 - so keep your ears out! We will decide Wednesday.

Margaret Harwood

By Jascin N. Leonardo Finger • July 21, 2025
The MMA found its first astronomer in Margaret Harwood, a 1907 Radcliffe graduate who worked in the Harvard Observatory. Her fellowship began in 1912 and over the first year, she researched, continued to conduct public lectures and open nights, and worked with students of all ages – including those in the public schools. She returned to Cambridge for the winter months where she continued to work at the Observatory. In 1915, she took her leave as was authorized by the fellowship and acquired her master’s degree in astronomy at Berkeley. She returned to Nantucket in 1916, accepting the position of Director of the Observatory. This made Harwood the first woman to head a small private observatory in the United States. Harwood continued her research, with a focus on variable asteroids, published results of her work in numerous publications, and continued to lecture and host open nights. She had assistance from others, including island carpenter and school teacher, Alvin E. Paddock. Harwood became a “first –class celestial photographer . . . accumulating a valuable set of Nantucket photographic plates of variable stars . . .” which are still part of the MMA collection and were the first in the world to be completely digitized. Over the course of her tenure, more than 3,600 plates of the night sky were taken – more than 2,100 by Harwood herself. In the 1950s, Harwood was the first woman to gain access to the Mount Wilson Observatory then the world’s leading observatory, where she was able to use the photographic instruments to further her research. Harwood is seen in the photograph here as she looks for Venus during midday in the MMO using the Cooke-Clark telescope, guided by Maria Mitchell’s own Alvan Clark. JNLF

Nantucket Maria Mitchell Association Welcomes Kike Calvo as Featured July Presenter.

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