BTW Berkshires 
Ever wish that you were first name friends with the wildflowers that begin coming up in April and fill the woods with color in May? May is a season of its own. In these short weeks while the spring sun warms the soil, and light reaches the ground before the trees unroll their leaves to…
Berkshire Naturalist Thom Smith looks for winter birds and ways to attract them to your dooryard. As a snowstorm approaches, birds flock to neighborhood feeders. If you want to operate a frugal diner for flying visitors, variety remains the key word. Many feeders with different foods will attract the most species and often in the greatest…
Berkshire naturalist Thom Smith goes prospecting for ice. In what we like to call an old-fashioned winter, when temperatures fall well below freezing, we live in a shining land. Throughout the Berkshires I have photographed waterfalls and cascades both summer and winter, but locally few frozen spectacles cause as much excitement as the massive natural…
Berkshire naturalist Thom Smith revisits a favorite winter walk. What a difference a year makes. Thanksgiving morning, 2016, with camera in hand I hiked through the woods around Wahconah Falls, carefully avoiding the gorge and falls, as I was alone and the rocks were very slippery. It had snowed the previous day and night, and…
Berkshire naturalist Thom Smith explores the wildest corner of the city. Springside Park’s 237 acres of mostly undeveloped field and woodland fit gently into the residential neighborhoods of Pittsfield’s North End. Far more trees — and squirrels — live in this part of town than any other, in the city’s largest park. How large is…
Berkshire naturalist Thom Smith goes looking for holiday evergreens. While dreaming of a white Christmas, consider making it greener. Christmas trees, the living kind, fresh cut locally by a family or the farm, continue a New England tradition. Christmas trees give open space for wildlife. They help cleanse the air and produce oxygen, and it’s…
Berkshire naturalist Thom Smith takes a fall walk in the northern hills. With land in Pownal Vermont and Williamstown, Massachusetts, I cannot think of a lovelier autumn walk than the preserve we call Mountain Meadow. Choose an afternoon with few clouds, when walking will be even more pleasurable if skies are blue and foliage contrasting, and…