These brilliant beetles are easy to spot and hard to forget.

Spots are the way to identify the six-spotted green tiger beetle, but don’t take the name too literally. The beautiful beetles defy the confines of their given name.

For instance, don’t waste time counting spots for an identity confirmation. The six-spotted green tiger beetle can have as few as zero or as many as 10 white spots on their hard, outer wings.

Warren Woessner, a self-described Renaissance man, is a poet, a chemist, a lawyer, and an active blogger. But on the Island, Mr. Woessner, 68, is primarily a “birdwatcher.” The term is, technically, outdated, he says, since bird enthusiasts began trying to distinguish themselves from the “little old ladies in their tennis shoes,” by referring to themselves as birders. Birding, which once meant hunting birds, now refers almost exclusively to the hobby of seeking the company of rare birds.

On a clear night on the Vineyard at this time of year, look skyward and you can see the Milky Way. The Island is one of the few places left on the East Coast where the galaxy can still be seen with clarity. But even here, where the dark night sky is considered a precious resource, like the clear ocean water and unpolluted landscape, there is growing concern about the strains being put on that resource from residential development.

A bird not usually seen in Massachusetts — and very rarely on the Vineyard — has nested successfully for the first time among this year’s highly productive tern colony at Norton Point.