Felix Neck Wildlife Sanctuary

Teaching the Young to Teach Us

They glide on the summer breeze high above the Island coastline, up toward the clouds and the blue ocean sky, above the homes and old meadows and woodlands of the Vineyard. Their flight track often leads to the fishing grounds of Sengekontacket Pond, that lovely stretch of water that forms the boundary between the townships of Edgartown and Oak Bluffs.

This is a wild and extraordinary place, this conservation preserve inhabited by blooming sea lavender and butterfly weed and bluestem and scrub oak. Blue jays, red-tailed hawks and herons fill the air. Towhees scuffle in the dry leaves below.

This is the Felix Neck Wildlife Sanctuary, belonging to the Massachusetts Audubon Society. But it is more than a sanctuary for sightseers to visit, for parents and their children to wander and wonder at the natural world around them. Felix Neck is a classroom especially for the young who need early education if they are to protect their own world.

A child bends to pick up a gull's errant gray feather along the sandy shore of Sengekontacket Pond. Children hurry down well-worn trails to the edge of the pond. They carry nets and buckets, seines and snorkels, masks and scopes. Their squeals of excitement carry across the water to the adults stuck in traffic on Beach Road.

This sanctuary knows that children are born with a deep curiosity about the world they live in. It feeds their desire with wriggling eels and snakes, flying eagles and hooting owls, feathers and fish and shells and information it hopes will make them responsible citizens in their world.

Gus Ben David is the director of Felix Neck. He was once a curious child studying earthworms. He now combines his love for wildlife with his equal affection for the human race. The Vineyard is already way ahead in its commitment to the environment. Island people learn about the diversity of wildlife from hundreds of programs at the sanctuary every year.

School children absorb information about endangered species and ecosystems, the seasons, stars and snakes, turtles, birds, ponds and marine life in zoo programs in the six Island schools each year.

"I get dozens and hundreds of phone calls asking for natural history information," Mr. Ben David says. "Education is not something you do only in a controlled situation or in an organized form in a class. You drive into the sanctuary down that old road that hasn't changed in a couple of hundred years. You may see a deer. You stop to see a squirrel, then you break out into the open field and look across and then you see the osprey. People are enjoying these animals in their natural habitat and to me that is the best education."

Felix Neck Wildlife Sanctuary is located on Felix Neck Road off the Edgartown-Vineyard Haven Road in Edgartown.