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 numbers. Stock them with foods like black oil sunflower seed or […]
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A winter walk on the Ashuwillticook Rail Trail ambles along Cheshire Reservoir
Pronounced Ash-oo-WILL-ti-cook, the Ashuwillticook bike path between Lanesborough and Adams in the Hoosac River Valley takes its name from the American Indian language. Ashuwillticook literally means “at the in-between pleasant river” or, more commonly today, “the pleasant river in between the hills.” Now the south branch of the Hoosic River […]
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Ice sculptures on the rocks grow naturally in the Berkshires
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 ice sculpture and […]
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Evergreens, ferns and berries give color in the winter woods
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 I was on a […]
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Springside Park in Pittsfield offers gentle walks in winter
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 the park? Jim McGrath, open space […]
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Where a homegrown Christmas Tree grows in the Berkshires
While dreaming of a white Christmas, some of us 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 just […]
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Mountain Meadow on a fall morning
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 […]
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Michael Melle sculptures make a treasure hunt for people of hay
Berkshire naturalist Thom Smith has gone searching for sculptures, from jazz musicians to refugees to Don Quixote and Sancho Panza … I have often called Berkshire artist Michael Melle’s sculptures, ‘straw people,’ but they are not straw — he chooses second cutting hay chosen for the best results. These hay […]
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Kayaks paddle on Benedict Pond in Beartown State Forest
Benedict Pond nestles in the 12,000-acre Beartown State Forest in Monterey, a year-round destination for the outdoors enthusiast. It is as pretty a small lake as any I have found in Western Massachusetts, and at nearly 1600 feet elevation it offers a hint of northern wilderness. Surrounding this 36-acre pristine […]
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Chicory blossoms blue in late summer
Berkshire naturalist Thom Smith finds late-summer wildflowers in the fields. A quick glance along August roadsides will immediately reveal white flowers, yellow flowers, pink flowers, orange flowers, all intense, and competing for the attention of pollinating insects of all shapes, sizes and descriptions. Among them grows a purple-blue blossom with […]
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