“Tis not her coldness, father,

That chills my labouring breast;

It’s that confounded cucumber

I’ve ate and can’t digest.”

Friday, August 9: Overcast. Light rain. Fishermen line the shoreline to the Lagoon Pond drawbridge early. A fleet of motor boats and sailboats are anchored off the Beach Road, in Vineyard Haven. Schooner Alabama is in the harbor.

The summer is racing to an end. The Agricultural Fair is this weekend, the Chilmark Community Center programs end on Friday the 16th (although I will lead their last of the season bird walk on August 20), and people are beginning to return to their homes after their summer vacations. And along with all of this, the birding is changing. Large numbers of shorebirds are being found on the flats of the South Shore and along a few of the harbors and Great Ponds. Yellow warblers are disappearing, headed for their winter haunts in the south.

Keep your eyes trained on the night sky in the coming week. One of the highlights of summer stargazing, the Perseid meteor shower, peaks on Sunday and Monday nights. This is a productive, weeks-long shower that could yield around 50 meteors an hour, according to the Peterson Field Guide’s Stars and Planets.

A new commercial-scale solar project and development of a wind turbine project south of the Island top the to-do list for Vineyard Power in the coming year, leaders of the cooperative told members last weekend.

A thin crescent moon appears under the bright planet Venus tonight. Take a look about a half hour after sunset.