Grass Lands This photo essay was shot entirely at The Nature Conservancy's Mashomack Preserve on Shelter Island which hosts and maintains one of the most endangered habitats on the planet: Grassland. Known by other names, meadow and prairie, these open areas teem with biodiversity like no other. Old growth Grasslands can be home to hundreds of native grasses, shrubs, wildflowers, birds and insects, and scientists are still uncovering previously unknown species. Though our collective imagination inaccurately places them west of the Mississippi only, Grasslands naturally existed from Long Island south to Florida, sweeping west to The Great Plains. Their destruction for housing developments and farmland has left precious little. We have yet to fully understand what we are truly losing and how critical it is to the survival of every living thing on earth.
“Many eyes go through the meadow, but few see the flowers in it”-Ralph Waldo Emerson
Day breaks over the old field Grassland, Mashomack Perserve.
A Bald Eagle with an Atlantic Menhaden retreats to the safety of the grassland with her meal.
A Yellow-Rumped Warbler eyes a fresh Myrmicine Ant hatch from a Sassafras tree.
A Blue-Winged Warbler singing atop a cherry sapling.
An Eastern Phoebe surrounded by autumn Staghorn Sumac
The meadow grasses in the morning light: Little Bluestem, Silver Hairgrass, and Broomsedge Bluestem.
A Northern Bobwhite, framed by Sheep's Sorrel, Winter Bentgrass, and Shining Willow.
An Indigo Bunting surveys from a Mulberry Tree.
Female Redstart in the early spring foliage.
A first-year Eastern Bluebird.
A Cooper's Hawk hovers.
A kaleidoscope of Cabbage White Butterflies.
A Cedar Waxwing couple court each other with berries and bugs.
“And by experiencing prairie---over the four seasons, and at various times of day, in all weathers---you develop a heightened sense of awe and wonder that will spill over into every other area of your life.”-Cindy Crosby, The Tallgrass Prairie: An Introduction
A male Common Yellowthroat balances on a Prairie Rose's thorny branch.
A female Common Yellowthroat scores an insect atop Roundleaf Greenbrier.
An Eastern Raccoon happily asleep with a full belly of ripe mulberries.
"Those who contemplate the beauty of the earth find reserves of strength that will endure as long as life lasts. There is something infinitely healing in the repeated refrains of nature—the assurance that dawn comes after night, and spring after winter.” -Rachel Carson
Orb-Weaver Spider's newly built web shimmers with dew anchored to the Slender and Flat-Top Goldenrod.
An American Bullfrog enjoys the warming sun after a cool autumn night.
A Yellow-billed Cuckoo waits patiently high in the canopy of a Bitternut Hickory.
Common Milkweed above and Butterfly Milkweed below... essential to the Monarch Butterfly's lifecycle.
A Halloween Pennant Dragonfly balances.
A dead tree supplies nesting, food storing, hunting, roosting, and resting for the resident bird population.
A Monarch Butterfly drinks deeply from a Field Thistle flower.
A moment's rest away from the nest for this Osprey.
"To reconnect with nature is key if we want to save the planet. If we kill off the wild, then we are killing a part of our souls...there is no sharp line between humans and the rest."-Jane Goodall