The tautaug, a fish native to the western Atlantic Ocean, lives with its teeth both in and out!

Songbirds are on the wing moving south for the season. Their migration will pick up in intensity over the next few weeks, and the sightings will be reported in this column.

A small group of veteran Island birders saw and photographed a white-faced storm petrel about 17 miles off the Vineyard over the weekend. The sighting is a record for the Vineyard and cause for great excitement in the birding community.

The Martha’s Vineyard Land Bank will expand its holdings around Ice House Pond in West Tisbury with the purchase of 22 acres off Lambert’s Cove Road. The seller is FOCUS, a Christian fellowship group with a campus nearby. The land bank paid $2.3 million.

The discovery of hundreds of lone star tick larvae on Chappaquiddick this summer confirms that the southern species is now breeding on the Vineyard, Island biologist Richard Johnson said.

As Katama Bay oyster farms remain closed because of Vibrio illness tied to raw oysters, scientists are using the bay as a testing ground to understand more about the bacteria and how it interacts with oysters.