One of the very first things Ali Berlow tells you is that she’s never killed a chicken. “I’ve never killed a chicken, and I never intend to,” she says matter-of-factly.

This may sound surprising coming from the author of The Mobile Poultry Slaughterhouse: Building a Humane Chicken Processing Unit to Strengthen Your Local Food System.

Dick Jennings has finished the 2013 osprey nest site inventory for the Vineyard. He found 71 breeding pairs, 23 failed nests and even with that, 87 young ospreys fledged. By towns the breakdown is as follows: Aquinnah had two productive nests, Chilmark had 11, Chappaquiddick had seven, Edgartown had eight, Oak Bluffs had seven, Tisbury had nine and West Tisbury had six.

Virgil warned us to be wary of the snake in the grass, but I am suggesting an addition to that advice. Beware of the snake in the water, too!

A pint of beer is a science class in a glass. On the macro level, there are the biology and chemistry lessons: fungi and plants collide to kick-start the fermentation process that produces alcohol. And the individual characteristics of those fungi (yeast) and plants (hops and malt) each affect how a beer will taste.

On Saturday, July 27, the film Sharkwater screens at 8 p.m. at the Katherine Cornell Theatre in Vineyard Haven. The documentary directed by Rob Stewart, aims to debunk stereotypes of sharks as vicious killers of the sea. Mr. Stewart’s film travels the oceans of the world exploring the lives of sharks, the people seeking to protect them and others who try to exploit and kill them, including shark poachers in Guatemala and marine reserves in Costa Rica and the Galapagos Islands.

In that critically short moment of dawn, an hour before sunrise, the planets Jupiter and Mars appear as a pair.