Tonight’s gibbous moon appears high in the southeastern sky after sunset. The moon is on the western end of the zodiacal constellation Leo.

Last Sunday afternoon, under wintery skies, there was yet another pilgrimage to Lucy Vincent Beach. For many it was a solemn moment as they stood and looked without saying a word.

Pam Bunker, chairman of the Chilmark beach committee, was there taking stock of how nature had once again changed the landscape of the beach.

“The whole eastern seaboard, from Plum Island all the way down the coast, is eroding . . . . It is a melancholy feeling,” she said.

Although frost still covers the ground some mornings, Island boards of health already have their focus turned towards summer and tick season.

At last week’s All-Island Selectmen’s meeting, Tisbury health commissioner Michael Loberg and Edgartown health agent Matthew Poole presented their annual year-end report for the Tick-Borne Illness Reduction Initiative, a five-year study funded by a grant from the Martha’s Vineyard Hospital. The study has just completed its second year.

A long winter of frequent storms, from October’s Hurricane Sandy to a three-day storm in early March, has been especially difficult for a group of frequent Island visitors: the Steamship Authority’s fleet of vessels, the hardy group that connects the Vineyard to the mainland.

Rough seas have contributed to 94 ferry cancellations in the first two months of 2013 alone, five per cent of the 1,892 scheduled trips, according to data provided by the Steamship Authority.

A month after the conservation commission ordered the removal of a Chilmark house perched on an eroding bluff, the commission Wednesday heard plans for the home’s removal: the guest house is slated to come down immediately, with the main house dismantled in phases depending on the rate of erosion. The 650-square-foot summer home on Stonewall Beach, owned by Natalie Conroy, stood eight feet from a cliff in late February. Ms. Conroy applied to move the house nine and a half feet back from the bluff, an application the commission denied because it would encroach on wetlands.

Three cheers for local knowledge! Although Arizona is a birder’s paradise, it is a challenge to find birds you want to see even if there is a guide to show you the way. So we rediscovered the importance of chatting with birders in the areas where we hoped to observe birds we had never seen before.