A group of Vineyard birders and biologists were saddened to hear that David (aka Pops) Masch had died. Many folks had met Dave while he was the naturalist, chief cook, father figure/counselor and instructor for the Penikese Island School. Dave was at Penikese for 29 years, and before that he was a biologist at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute. Dave was an excellent fisherman/shell fisherman and a superb cook.

In the earliest years of astronomy, no one had a clear understanding of the magic of the stars in the skies. Twinkling stars were untouchable, yet they glowed every night. Naming the constellations after mythological creatures probably came out of an effort to both understand and remember.

Take a look at a Vineyard book shelf and you’re likely to find The History of Martha’s Vineyard by Charles Banks or Moraine to Marsh by Anne Hale. For conservationists, Aldo Leopold’s book A Sand County Almanac published in 1949 is equally iconic. “I think anybody can be inspired by what he wrote,” Sheriff’s Meadow Foundation director Adam Moore said this week. “It’s one of the key pieces of literature in our environmental history in this country.”

The shad spirit or Alewife bird is considered by a number of people a harbinger of spring. Ornithologists call this member of the sandpiper family Gallinago delicata. Bird watchers have called this agile flyer common or Wilson’s snipe. As much as I would like to think that spring is right around the corner, Wilson’s snipe cannot be used as an indicator of spring rains, herring runs, blooming shad bush or daffodils.

In The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, writer Douglas Adams makes this observation, “Man has always assumed that he was more intelligent than dolphins because he had achieved so much . . . the wheel, New York, wars and so on . . . while all the dolphins had ever done was muck about in the water having a good time. But conversely, the dolphins had always believed that they were far more intelligent than man...for precisely the same reason.”

The ocean is getting warmer and it is having an impact on where fish are calling home.

National Marine Fisheries Service scientists recently published a report citing that gray snapper, a fish more common in the waters off Florida, are moving north up the coast due to warming coastal waters and estuaries along the Eastern Seaboard.