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Posts Tagged "farms"

Go Locavore at the 2018 Wild America Nature Festival!

Posted on Jul 9, 2018

Go Locavore at the 2018 Wild America Nature Festival!

Fresh strawberries. BBQ chicken. Mushrooms. Sweet corn. Cherries. Burgers. Black raspberries. We could keep on listing the amazing locally farmed and wild edible foods that make our summer delicious, but it would take up more space than we have for this article. Roger Tory Peterson’s Wild America Nature Festival at Panama Rocks on July 28 & 29 will celebrate amazing, locally produced and sourced food and highlight the importance of the environment to our food chain. One of the highlights of this year’s festival will be a series of programs delivered by Lee Peterson, the younger of Roger...

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Savannah Sparrow

Posted on Nov 10, 2015

Savannah Sparrow

This Savannah Sparrow is showing off some excellent fall and soon to be winter camouflage! Grasslands, fields, shrub and scrub, and beach habitats are some of the places to find them still moving through in late, small numbers, with others setting up their winter homes. Keep an eye out for the Ispwich Savannah Sparrow if you are on the Atlantic Coast. This subspecies of Savannah Sparrow breeds exclusively on Sable Island, Nova Scotia, and winters on similar sand dunes on the shoreline. It is noticeably paler and weighs approximately 50% more than most other Savannah Sparrow...

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Savannah Sparrow

Posted on Oct 13, 2015

Savannah Sparrow

Masses of Savannah Sparrows are still on the move right now, pushing through our fields, grasslands, shrublands, farmlands and other open areas with significant food supplies and enough room to hide. Autumn allows you to study so many individual birds that show us how much variance there can be within what we call a species.

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Savannah Sparrow

Posted on Sep 28, 2015

Savannah Sparrow

This Savannah Sparrow (Passerculus sandwichensis) was one of dozens of migrants of the species that I spotted this past weekend. Their numbers are increasing as they head south for the winter. As we go deeper into autumn we will see hundreds of them in fields, grasslands and farms across large open spaces in areas like Chautauqua County or coastal scrub and shrub habitat in locations such as Stratford Point. Get those Peterson Field Guides ready! They will not all be this easy to identify…

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Starving Raptors

Posted on Mar 11, 2015

Starving Raptors

These photos are of a Northern Harrier on the hunt, swooping over grasslands and fields in search of small mammal prey. While I took these shots mere days ago this type of predatory behavior in itself has been a bit more scarce than usual this winter. Birds of prey, including owls and various hawks, have had a very difficult time finding food during the historically cold and very snowy conditions. Needing more calories than ever to survive in this weather they have had very little to find, and the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation reports there has been a high mortality...

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