One of the best ways to support conservation education on Martha’s Vineyard is about to happen just as you are reading this. The statewide Birdathon begins at 6 p.m. today and runs until the same hour tomorrow. A number of teams will fan out all over the state, but the one that matters to us is the Felix Neck team. Groups will search the Island to find as many species of birds as they can. Anyone can support their efforts by pledging a certain amount per species found. Last year a new record was set of 132 species, but if the weather is favorable we could do even better this year. Pledges can be any amount, from a nickel or dime per species to a dollar or so for those feeling generous. Any amount is welcome. And to make it easy, you can call Felix Neck at 508-627-4850 and leave your pledge, or even easier for many, go online to firstgiving.com/fundraiser/suzan-bellincampi/1/team and make your pledge there. This is a great way to support our own local Felix Neck Wildlife Sanctuary and its fine programs. Get involved. Give those field observers an incentive to work even harder. Call or go online today.

This past week was one of those wonderful periods when every day brings new bird species. March, which devoured April this year, finally ended, and with the milder weather came a welcome influx of songbirds.

Have you ever wondered where our nesting birds spend their winter? I have. Well, thanks to a study conducted by Dr. Cheri Gratto-Trevor, a research scientist for Environment Canada, we now know that at least one of “our” piping plovers spends its winter on Andros Island in the Bahamas. I put our in quotes because it probably spends more of its year in the Bahamas than the five months it is here.

I guess you could call it forensic ornithology — assembling a story or an answer by linking bits of information, like detectives solving a murder on all those TV shows I don’t watch. Anyway, birders do it a lot.

T. S. Eliot wrote that “April is the cruelest month,” and he was right about the first part of April if you are a birder. In short, lots of winter birds have begun to leave or have left, and few of our summer residents have arrived. In part, the slow arrival of many breeding species has to do with the ocean. Its water is still colder than the land, in the low 40s. Thus any breeze flowing over it drops the temperature on the Island, whereas 40 miles inland the first leaves are beginning to come out in sheltered spots. Out here there are frost bottoms in the state forest where leaves do not appear until mid-June, and occasionally some rhododendrons are still in bloom for the Fourth of July.