So you think life is tough? You should be a baby piping plover. Born in a mere scrape in the sand, expected by your parents to fend for yourself from birth, facing danger at every turn from skunks, raccoons, crows, hawks, storms, off-road tires.
And yet the tiny birds — and there are not that many of them left — appear to be doing pretty well on the Vineyard this year, albeit with the help of a social safety net that would be the envy of hard-scrabble humans.
It is hoped a costly new regime of water quality tests for Sengekontacket Pond, which began this week, will identify the source of its water quality problems and may allow the pond to be open more often for shellfishing.
Following a string of poor water quality test results last year, the state Division of Marine Fisheries imposed a mandatory summer closure period on the pond. That period begins this Sunday, June 1, and runs to October.
State highway engineers have begun a new monitoring regime on the Lagoon Pond drawbridge after it apparently shifted on its pilings and would not close, blocking traffic for several hours over the busy Memorial Day weekend.
The bridge was stuck in the open position for about three and a half hours from 5 p.m. on Sunday, forcing traffic to detour along Barnes Road. The malfunction caused traffic jams and delays, and created a substantial backup at the blinker light intersection in Oak Bluffs where many cars were detoured.
Five or six years ago Kristin Henriksen started doing lectures on Martha’s Vineyard about the value of planting Island native plants.
“And afterwards,” she recalled yesterday, “people would come up to me and ask where they could get them. And I had to say I didn’t know.”
And so in 2006, she opened a nursery called Going Native, in Vineyard Haven. And when she talks native, she means local. Not native to North America, not native to New England, but Island native genotypes — plants from seeds collected here.
The Sheriff’s Meadow Foundation this week issued a public apology and launched an overhaul of its land management practices following the revelation that large numbers of trees and other plants had been dug up from two of its preserves and used to landscape an exclusive private property on the North Shore.
The hubbub of non-English voices stilled and everyone stood for the entrance of clerk magistrate Liza Williamson. Things began in the usual way: “Hear ye, hear ye . . .”
But from then on the proceedings in Edgartown district court on Tuesday were far from usual.
For a start, the proceedings were conducted in neither English nor Portuguese, but wholly in Spanish, and the 60-odd people who appeared before Mrs. Williamson were 14 or 15 years old.
